Topic: Husbands Beware (1956)

[metaldams]

http://www.threestooges.net/filmography/episode/166
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049346/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjTyphRfmI

Watch HUSBAND'S BEWARE in the link above



      HUSBANDS BEWARE, while no classic, is better than most of these recycle jobs, partly due to the fact that the stock footage from BRIDELESS GROOM is so classic and partly because the new footage is decent.  Let's be honest, the boys are going through the motions in the new footage, but it's motions I just happen to enjoy.  I've always liked the boys screwing things up in a kitchen, it's comfort food for me.  Shaving feathers off turkeys, dousing them in gas, making rolls hard as rocks, and wiping your hands on curtains, yeah, it's been done before, but again, comfort food! 

      However, the old footage is an absolute joy to watch.  I don't think Shemp is necessarily bad in the new footage in these recycles the way Curly was when he was sick, but he has no standout scenes either.  A stark reminder of this happens when we see how awesome he is with Dee Green, with Christine, and with the wanna be brides in general.  We're not getting this energetic Shemp, haven't been for a while.  Yeah, he's six months away from the end here, but still.  Overall though, I can tolerate this short due to comfort food gags and awesome old footage.  Gotta add, yet again, another lame bullet in the ass ending.  Very cliche at this point.

      The two wives are quite scary in a comic way.  Of interest to me and Lefty is Lu Leonard.  Her only Stooge appearance is OK, but thirty three years later, she is awesome as Al Bundy's school librarian, Ms. Degroot, in Married With Children.  One of my all time favorite episodes.

7/10

[Shemp_Diesel]

This particular recycle reminds me of Booty and the Beast--in the sense that the new footage which opens the short is good; very good even. So good, that you can't help but feel cheated when the stock footage rears its head.

But--given that this was put together in 1955--when the shooting schedules were down to 1 day, I guess I can see why Jules White took the cheap way out. The contrast in storylines between the old and new is shaky--to say the least.

But--getting back to the new stuff--I have to admit to laughing real hard at a lot of it (Do I look like Davy Crockett). Rubbing the turkey down with turpentine, Shemp's killer muffins, the soap in the coffee & the wives throwing every stooge out of the house--really funny shit for me. And, who knows, maybe if Felix Adler had written it a few years earlier, he could have developed a very funny "all original."

At any rate, I say this one is passable & maybe the last of the "rehashes" worth talking about--as looking ahead--things don't get any better going forward...

5 out of 10 pokes...

[Paul Pain]

Required reading: BRIDELESS GROOM thread

Another week, another suck stock job.   However, this isn't quite worth the flaming burn in hell.

Most of the new footage in this one is pretty good for a stock job.  We have the boys screwing up in a kitchen.  Sorry, but there's no way anyone would ever fall for Dora and Flora.  No person who is that much of a human piece of s*** can put up a good enough act to get themselves married.  They are as unlikable here as Walter Long is in ANY OLD PORT or, in a Stooge reference, Sergeant MacGillicuddy.  Yes, I just compared them to that cretin.

I think the turpentine was a last minute change because, if you look closely, the canister says "salad oil" when Moe initially is grabbing it out of the cabinet.  It only says turpentine after the turkey is "bathed."  See the attached image; it says "salad oil" on that can.  Moe also does a good rendition of Curly's shaving routine.  Shemp does pretty good with the muffins, but he seems bored with his role here whereas Moe and Larry do quite well.

The highlights of this short are Dee Green singing and Christine McIntyre mistaking Shemp for "cousin Basil," which... oh, right, that's stock footage!

The entire scene of the girls in the justice's office is retarded here.  It was already such a worthless POS scene in the original to get it knocked down multiple pegs in my book, but here it's unjustified.  In the original, the gold-digging sluts only arrive because they read about the fortune in the newspaper.  Well, there was no newspaper for them to read about here because Uncle Caleb isn't dead, and if we suppose Moe and Larry did take out an ad, then they're going for a stretch in Sing-Sing for fraud!  There's no reason on earth for those to ever show up.  And how the heck would they just happen to ALL show up there?  God help us, because it is pathetic scripting and stock-jobbing here!

The ending is pretty good, though, as Shemp decides to load Moe and Larry with a little bit of lead... Yeah, it's another "lame bullet in the ass ending," but Moe and Larry deserve it nevertheless.

I changed my mind... this short does suck pretty horribly, actually, but it's better than some of what was and what will be.

4/10

[Shemp_Diesel]

No "Burn in Hell" this week--I'm quite surprised... 

Well, maybe not totally surprised--as I said before, the new footage at the beginning was good enough that it could have been developed into an all-new short, but what, 61 years later, all we can do is go "What if."

The contrast of how Moe in the new footage goes from "pussy whipped" to back to the old, cantankerous boss when the old footage is trotted out, to me is quite jarring. I'm getting a little depressed just thinking about it, knowing that the back of Joe Palma's head is not that far away....

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

Yecchh.

[Paul Pain]

No "Burn in Hell" this week--I'm quite surprised... 

The kitchen scene was just too good to send it to burn in eternity.

[Lefty]

Well, we could say "What might have been," had this not been a remake, as the new footage at the beginning was very good.  (Or as Pedro Morales used to say to Vince McMahon in the interviews on Championship Wrestling and All-Star Wrestling when Morales was WWWF champion, "Veddy goooood, Veence!")  Actually, if "Husbands Beware" had been based on the new stuff, and the Stooges had triumphed over those monstrous wives of theirs, the title could have been "The Taming of the Shrews."

Unfortunately, stock footage came along and sank the rest of the short, especially with, as Paul Pain stated, the girls in the justice's place being there for unexplained reasons.  Those gals would have looked better with the stupid hats, but no one ever said fashion in the 1940s was anything to brag about.

      The two wives are quite scary in a comic way.  Of interest to me and Lefty is Lu Leonard.  Her only Stooge appearance is OK, but thirty three years later, she is awesome as Al Bundy's school librarian, Ms. Degroot, in Married With Children.  One of my all time favorite episodes.

7/10

Lu Leonard was scary regardless of what color hair she had or whatever age she may have been, and Mad Max(ine) Gates looked as though she could have competed in pro wrestling against the men.  As for "7/10", that reminds me that I start bowling practice in another month, with the season beginning two months hence.   

[Desmond Of The Outer Sanctorum]

Whatever else can be said about this short, IMO it does the worst job of any remake of using old footage. NOTHING that happens in the old footage makes any sense in the new context they've put it in. NOTHING. If Moe and Larry were tricking Shemp as they say in the new footage at the end, then there is NO reason for them to go through all the rigamarole that they do, and especially no reason for them to try to hook Shemp up with Christine's character. Logically, what they would do is try to get Shemp married to Dee's character right away instead of stumbling unintentionally into it after lots of pointless activity.

Not to mention that their revenge on Shemp is really rather poor, given how much nicer Dee's character is (whatever her faults) than Shemp's sisters. If anyone's getting punished, it's her, getting married to Shemp who's dumb, rather mean, and doesn't even like her.

I could imagine an "aftermath" to this one, where Moe and Larry have quickly ended their marriages, while Dee's character has gotten a makeover and she and Shemp are living happily. Yeah, some revenge on Shemp.

[Dr. Hugo Gansamacher]

This is less bad than most of the Stooge recycling jobs. Brideless Groom does not lose much from the omission of the scene of Moe and Larry getting Shemp presentable for meeting Miss Hopkins, though I am sorry not to see Shemp tangle with Justice Benton's piano again. But I'm always up for another viewing of Miss Hopkins disposing of the false Cousin Basil. The new stuff that makes up the first part of the short is undistinguished but not bad, and at least it is continuous rather than being just a series of new clips spliced into old footage.

So Moe contrives to publish a false story in the newspaper about the death of Shemp's rich uncle Caleb--and within a few hours of having sworn revenge on Shemp. That's some fast work. 

Watch HUSBAND'S BEWARE in the link above

What's a beware? And which husband has one?

[Kopfy2013]

I give this a 6 ... good revenge motive....

[BeatleShemp]

This is a pretty decent remake of BRIDELESS GROOM. The opening four or five minutes with Moe and Larry getting hitched to Shemp's sisters was great.  The plot holes though is what holds me back from giving it an 8, because in one day, Moe and Larry get married, thrown out of their house, teach a music lesson, fool Shemp into thinking his Uncle Caleb has died and left him half a mil, and all these women show up because according to Moe they "found out about the 500 grand in the papers." That is where it took a minor nose dive because Moe never went to the newspaper in this version. That aside, the beginning was great, the old stuff of course is classic, and the ending felt rushed to give it an ending. So, I am going to give this a 6.5.

[Woe-ee-Woe-Woe80]

One short I've started off liking but became really disappointed when they've started showing old footage from the classic episode "Brideless Groom" because I've felt the short would've been good itself if it just had all new footage, it's definitely one of the better rehashed shorts but far from a classic, I give this short a 6/10

[Daddy Dewdrop]

We take a break from the Bessers for the #170 short on my worst-to-first countdown with "Husbands Beware."  The last half of the short is recycled from one of my favorite Shemp films, "Brideless Groom."  The new scenes in the first half are just okay (man, those big women are just terrible human beings!) and the last half just reminds me of how much better the original short was.

#170. Husbands Beware