Pest Man Wins

That's the question that Larry asks Moe after giving him a piece of cheese laced with rat poison. "Pest Man Wins" is a rarity in the fact that it's a remake that tops the original "Ants in the Pantry" with Curly.

Now "Ants" was a very good film in its own right, but here in "Pest" the short moves a bit quicker, the redone gags are a little funnier than they were in the original (see the hilarious "Clap and Dance" routine when Vernon Dent gets a mouse down his shirt) and there's a big pie fight at the end.

If I had one quibble with the film is that maybe Jules White reused a little too much stock footage during the pie fight instead of inserting more new shots of Shemp, but as I said it's only a minor gripe.

"Pest Man Wins" is a first rate job. Fans of the stooges should really enjoy this one.

(*Memorable "party guest" quote*) - "You disgraceful vagabonds!"

It seems that for the frustrated exterminators, Shemp, Larry, and Moe working for the Lightning Pest Control Co. is proving to be a colossally futile profession, all around.

But when Larry excitedly shares (with his 2 fellow stooges) his brainstorm scheme about how to improve business (through devious methods) that's when things really begin to look up for our downhearted boys.

For the most part - I was actually quite entertained by this vintage comedy-short from 1951 (and I especially enjoyed the frantic-paced finale that involved lots of pastries being tossed through the air).

This is one of those "cut and paste" Stooge shorts, aka a "new" short with new footage and stock footage mixed into it. It's a remake of an earlier short with Curly (Ants in the Pantry) with Moe, Larry, and Shemp going through pretty much a scene by scene remake for the most part. They even lift pie throwing footage from In the Sweet Pie and Pie and Half Wit's Holiday (Curly's last short). So it's kind of fun to see how much footage is new footage, and how much is stock footage aka footage from other shorts. Despite the cutting and pasting, the short is still entertaining and quite funny. There's a few continuity flubs where the old footage doesn't really "mix" well with the new stuff, but it's still a good short.

Both this short and it's counterpart ANTS IN THE PANTRY are excellent entries in the long list of stooge shorts. Both are equal in the laughs department and both suffer from somewhat weak endings that deflate the film a bit, with the pie fight ending for this version relying heavily on stock footage from HALF-WITS HOLIDAY & thus, knocking my rating down a bit. Jules White seemed to be developing a fetish for reusing old footage when the 50's rolled around(He also reuses the "Half-Wits" footage in one of those clunkers made after Shemp died(Scheming Schemers).

8/10

THE PEST MAN WINS is one of my top ten Three Stooges films. It's a tough decision between which pie fighting film I like best between PEST MAN WINS or IN THE SWEET PIE & PIE. This short is a remake of the Curly classic ANTS IN THE PANTRY. But Jules White added a great pie fight, which was missing from the original.

Most of the pie footage is really stock footage of HALF-WITS HOLIDAY and IN THE SWEET PIE & PIE. This is a great short and I recommend it to all stooge fans.

**** out of 4 stars.