I'll Never Heil Again

I was fortunate enough to see this film on the big screen the other night. What a treat! Moe plays Hailstone, the dictator of Moronica. Curly is Field Marshal Herring and Larry is Minister of Propaganda. Three former ministers, Ixnay, Umpchay, and Amscray want to reinstall the former King of Moronica. They plan on having the king's daughter plant a bomb in their office. Do plots really matter in a Stooge short? The satire of Hitler was funny enough. Moe's barking of orders in "German" was hilarious. There was even references to a Japanese man taking photographs, which I didn't know was a stereotype of the Japanese even in the early 1940's. Fun, fun, fun, laugh out loud hilarious.

Technically, this is a sequel to the 1940 masterpiece "You Nazty Spy" where Moe, Larry and Curly are heads of a country (parodied after Germany) called Moronica. Here, they return, with the dead on impressions still funny, yet chilling. Great gags, but I also laughed at the names on the map of Starvania (Great Mitten, Yom Kippers, Jug 'O' Slavia). Great fun, with the stooges being hilarious as always. Not as good as part 1, but plenty of laughs still around. A+

In the country of Moronica, Moe is Hailstone the Dictator, Curly is a Field Marshal, and Larry is Minister of Propaganda. They are Nazi-like rulers trying to take over the world with the other Axis powers. The former king is trying to take back his kingdom and his daughter plants a bomb in their headquarters.

This is the sequel to You Nazty Spy! (1940) and follows Chaplin's great satire The Great Dictator (1940). Most of it is down with a nudge and a wink to the audience. It's not quite as meta. It's a direct spoof of the real world. The boys manage to have their cake and eat it too. They are the bumbling Nazis and get to fight the other Axis leaders. I can see this as a safe anti-Nazi film for the masses. The boys are using their power for the war effort.

This particular short subject for the one and only time in their careers has the 3 Stooges villains in their own film. But what villains they be in this rough house satire on the government in Germany.

Put that Charlie Chaplin mustache on Moe and he makes a wonderful dictator of Moronica who overthrew the traditional monarchy there with the battle cry of Moronica for Morons. In fact with Larry as the propaganda minister and Curly as the defense minister the Stooges short is a wonderful followup to Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

The Three Stooges were never terribly original in their material, they borrowed from other comics quite liberally. Whole bits like them playing catch with the globe with their 'allies' are taken right from The Great Dictator. But the Stooges never had the writing talent available to them that other comics did, they were burlesque comics who worked fast and cheap. But always funny.

I'll Never Heil Again is one of their best short subject and I think Moe is as good a Hitler as Chaplin was.

This is perhaps the funniest of all Stooges shorts, with many great scenes and gags. I have seen every one of the Stooges' shorts several times, and this has long been my favorite one. I also feel that Moe was the only impressionist to grasp the full severity of the world's most nefarious despot, which, years later, reveal just how extremely well informed, as well as accurate and highly intelligent Moe was. (I have often stated to my wife that I found Moe to be the funniest of the trio.) There are several notable scenes with adult humor content. In one scene, Gilda, the daughter of the deposed king, plans to place a loaded pool ball on the Stooges' pool table and tells Mr. Umpchay that when she gets through with Hailstone, "he won't know which end his axis is standing on", coming dangerously close to limits The National Board Of Review were imposing at the time. (My feeling is, that the Board probably had some reviewers who were adamantly opposed to Hitler and let that one slide.) The pool sequence is astonishingly well produced, and there's that extremely silly RHUMBA number again, when the evil leaders are all vying for the world! This is also one of the best written Stooges shorts in that it is entirely consuming from start to finish. In a personal event that involved this short, in 1991, my wife was at the local hospital. I was in the waiting room, which seemed to be filled with nothing but other husbands, on a winter Sunday morning. In the corner there was a TV set playing. At 11:00 AM, a local UHF station broad-casted Stooges shorts for one hour on Sundays in those days, which this set just happened to be tuned to. As 11:00 rolled around, the sound of the Stooges opening title music attracted my attention and I put down the Sunday paper to look. The first short was this one. None of the other men were watching. As I started to laugh, then guffaw, the other men became curious, put down their magazines, and within 3 or 4 minutes, the entire room was exploding in laughter. I don't think I ever laughed so hard in my life! One of the funniest scenes I will never forget, is when Moe has summoned Curley and Larry. As they goose step into the room, one of them is marching in reverse. When they stop in front of Moe, both of them have one of their legs raised, to which Moe retorts: "put 'em down!" A number of Stooges shorts will likely never be shown on TV, as they have been banned for various social reasons. Although this one is still screened occasionally, it is quite rare. Until I bought the complete collection in 2007, that screening in the hospital waiting room was the last time I had seen it. If I had to choose 10 of the stooges MUST SEE shorts, this would be at the very top of the list. In conclusion, every woman I have ever known has claimed to have disliked the Stooges. Yet, when I get them to watch one of their shorts, they always laugh! Go figure.