PEST MAN WINS is obviously an early experiment in stock footage, with few previous shorts having done this. What we have here, is a stock footage atrocity. It's colossal! It's stupendous! It's putrid!
While I agree that the plot of the Stooges deliberately investing a home is despicable, isn't that part of the Stooges' (and even Laurel and Hardy's) character? That get rich quick by any means is part of what creates most of their situations (like A PLUMBING WE WILL GO).
The new scenes in this are at least well done... on the most part. We have scenes like the "naw, but I used to see triangles" with the the cheese, and Vernon Dent playing "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" with feline accompaniment. They still haven't added the error I found in that scene; when the boys climb on the piano to get the cats, no notes are played even though the keys are being smashed.
Our new scenes also deliver torment in the form of Nanette Bordeaux who, in my eyes, is not that pretty, and she is a terrible actress just used to fill in stereotype spots that torture me with their lousiness. And next week we get another steaming pile of manure from Nanette in the form of A MISSED FORTUNE. Margie Liszt isn't at her best here, but she's acceptable enough.
The stock footage scenes are completely out of place in parts and work to create an even larger colossal nightmare than we are already presented with. And that is how I will review these: how well the stock footage fits within the new scenes.
Yuck-a-lip.
5/10
This short can...
BURN IN HELL!