Punch Drunks

Punch Drunks (1934)

**** (out of 4)

Three Stooges short has the wimpy Curley turning into a mean fighting machine each time he hears Pop Goes the Weasel. This is certainly the best short I've seen from the Stooges and i doubt they made one that was better. The laughs are non-stop from start to finish the violent humor is great throughout as well. The site gags are also pretty good including Larry walking into the bar, pulling his hat off and a part of it remaining on. The boxing match at the end also contains plenty of laughs.

The amazing thing to me is that Larry finds a man on a Truck with a record player playing Pop Goes The Weasel.The Record never ends and even when Larry crashes the truck through a brick wall the song is still playing at exactly the right spot. And Al Hill was a professional fighter albeit with a career than ended about ten years before this comedy. And Curly was the Butterbean of his generation,on a smaller scale. Look for Maxie Rosenbloom as one of the Fighters that Curly knocks out in the Cafe. And when we watch we love how the little shove that Moe gives Larry ends up with him being about ten feet away,head first in the stream. One of my Favorite Stooge Comedies!

This, the 3 Stooges' second short for Columbia, is my all-time favorite. Perhaps it's because it's the only one that they themselves wrote. This was the first film to have the Stooges' famous "cure" for a tapeworm ("Four pieces of burnt toast and a rotten egg."). It also truly showcases Larry's violin-playing ability. The sight of Larry running down the streets looking for something playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" are hilarious. However, there were a bit of dangerous bits that came from this short: The actor playing Killer Kilduff actually bloodied Curley's lip and nose. The man on the truck that Larry takes to play "Weasel" broke his arm when he fell off the truck. Also, I think the ending has been cut, at least in the prints that I've seen. The ones I've seen show at least three or four other men stretched out in the ring with Kilduff at the end of the fight. Yet, no explanation of how they all got there. I'm thinking that PUNCH DRUNKS had a similar ending to the later GRIPS, GRUNTS AND GROANS, but is now cut for some reason. Has anyone ever seen the uncut version of this short? I'd really love to see it that way.

I'm not a stooge fan, but this is funny! Curly is pretty much insane when he does that, the way he dances around like he's chasing his tail. What I like is that Larry, being a violinist before a stooge, plays the violin! (That's how I guessed what his instrument was on a quiz.) A real must-see for stooge fans (and I'm not even one of them!)

In this early effort, rather than just watching the threesome run around and bash each other, there is genuine plot and character development. Instead of three barely distinguishable buffoons, we have three distinct characters interacting in an actual story line. They have a plausible initial meeting at a restaurant where Curly works as a waiter, Moe is a customer who discovers Curly's hidden boxing talent, and Larry the down-and-out musician who inadvertently plays the tune that sets Curly off. The plot device of having some stimulus turn Curly into an invincible destruction machine is reused in later efforts, most notably the mouse in the later "Moe, Larry, the cheese" routine, but they never really improve upon the use of "Pop Goes the Weasel" here. Larry is always at his best when he is able to play the violin in a way that fits plausibly into the plot, and Moe is actually sympathetic as the tough guy who takes the distraught Curly under his wing and makes him a success. The story is a real story, not just a loose string of slapstick antics; we actually feel tension and anticipation at the end as we watch Curly being beaten up by his opponent and wonder if and how Larry will find another way to play "Pop Goes the Weasel." Grade: A+.