Goofs and Saddles

Goofs and Saddles (1937)

*** (out of 4)

Spoof of the Old West has The Three Stooges playing Wild Bill Hiccup, Buffalo Bilious and Just Plain Bill as the three are sent out to try and gather information on some cattle rustlers. This here is a pretty good short as it contains a nice amount of laughs as well as some funny physical stuff but I wouldn't necessarily call it a classic. The highlight would have to be a scene where the three dress themselves as trees so that they can spy on the enemy but they end up getting too close and one of the bad guys things he sees a rabbit jump into the bushes. Axe and gun play soon follow. Another nice sequence is a poker game where the Stooges start cheating without knowing the man they're playing with just killed three other men for doing the same thing. The nice shoot out at the end makes for an entertaining way to spend 20-minutes.

Yikes, that subject headline quote what Three Stooges are told in this old TTS short. Imagine, if that was real life; there would still be no life west of the Mississippi!

In this Old West short, the Stooges play "Buffalo Bilous" (Curly), "Wild Bill Hiccup" (Moe) and "Just Plain Bill" (that's Larry for you, always in the middle between the lovable Curly and mean Moe.) Their mission is to get every last cattle rustler and either kill him or bring him in. The rustling has to end! Giving them the orders is "General Muster." Yeah, the writers of the Stooges short films sure loved to be corny went it came to names of people, cities, businesses, you name it.

The main foes for the good-guy cowboys are a group led by "Longhorn Pete (Stanley Blystone) who is one, tough hombre and won't take any baloney from the Buffalo Bilous and his partners.

Some of the things in here classic Three Stooges and guaranteed to have you laughing out loud. A few of the gags I really liked were when the guys pretended to be big bushes, the p.s. on the note to Gen. Muster written by the guys,and about everything involving Curly, from a donkey chewing his butt, to his vest, to his reactions to people at the bar, on and on. He was a hoot, as usual.

The boys are part of the cavalry and find themselves sent off to put down some rustlers. Of course, they are considered and elite fighting force. They bumble their way along until they are in danger. Of course they seem to come out on top not matter what happens. There is a great battle scene at the end. Much more creative and imaginative than most of these.

I'm not a fan of Westerns, even parodies of Westerns, so when I finally sat down to watch this one I kinda groaned. That groan only lasted about two seconds, because the genius of the Stooges overwhelmed whatever trepidation I had about the genre.

It's also worth noting that this is now one of my favorite Stooges films because I always especially loved when they did gags with animals. This film includes not one or two or three but four animals key to the story, thus perhaps why I loved it so much, in spite of being averse to Westerns. Highly recommended, even if you hate the genre!

If you're keeping score, yes, another one of Curly's GREATEST hits. Insanity on wheels.

Wild Bill Hiccup (Moe), Buffalo Billous (Curly) and Just Plain Bill (Larry) are hereby ordered by General Mustar (stone-face Theodore Lorch) to nab every dang cattle rustler they can get their hands on. Shoot and ask questions later!

The Three Bills (way, way out west!) eventually wind up at Longhorn Pete's (Stanley Blystone, of course) saloon. Where the action is! The place is full of no-account rustlers, but first lets have a crooked game of cards? Deuces WILD. A game you have to see. Thanks to Felix Adler's nuttier than nuttier script, Curly is the ultimate GOOF, with or without a saddle. And then there's the matter of a monkey?

The gang saddles up and chases Moe, Larry and Curly to a remote cabin, and it looks like curtains for them, although they have a secret weapon? -- a meat grinder that doubles as a machine gun! Another laugh out loud bit that makes this film a class comedy act.

Many familiar faces from B westerns; Sam Lufkin plays the colonel and Ethan Laidlaw plays the rustler boss. Ethan later moved to tv westerns, appearing in HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. Look for silent screen comedian Snub Pollard as a baddie. Snub was also in tv westerns, like DEATH VALLEY DAYS, playing old timers.

Famous footnote. Joe Palma made his Stooge debut in this film. Joe later worked as a double for Shemp in the 50s, in scenes he did not complete following his death. That was him in the background shots, looking a lot like Shemp.

By the way, Larry's Just Plain Bill character was a nod to the famous radio soap opera of the same title.

Not to be missed if you're the ultimate Stooge-a-holic. Remastered on Columbia dvd, generally by decades, 30s, 40s and 50s episodes. Big thanks to METV for running these oldies Saturdays.