Vagabond Loafers

A socialite is hosting a dinner party celebrating a recent purchase of a high priced portrait. She needs emergency plumbers and calls the Stooges. It's not a good call until two party guests steal the painting and the Stooges stumble into capturing them.

Plumbing is good Stooges' mayhem. Water is spraying everywhere. They hit each other with pipes. Pipes are connected in wacky ways. It's all there for them. It's a Shemp Stooges and it's as good as he gets.

As others have mentioned, this was a reworking of sorts from the 1940 Stooges film, "A Plumbing We Will Go," which featured Curly instead of Shemp and the boys.

I'm not going to go into too much of the story because they used some stock footage in here or they just did the same gags they had done earlier in the '40 film, which I hate to see as I've probably seen all these shorts many times over. Still, I never cease to laugh at some things, such as Dudley Dickenson's act as the cook doing double-takes and slipping and sliding all over the floor as the kitchen gets flooded, or Larry's head popping out of the ground.

When you see Kenneth MacDonald in a Three Stooges film you know you've just seen the villain. MacDonald who had a tough, film-noir voice and face. They were always good in those roles, as was Christine McIntyre, another regular in these shorts, and Emil Sitka, who usually was innocent victim of something the Stooges did. Another regular, Symona Bonfice, always plays a stuffy socialite who winds up getting ruined by the inept Stooges. As you can see, there are many familiar "Three Stooges" faces in this humorous remake.

Despite the familiarity of this story, it was still a lot of fun to watch.

This remake almost does as well as "A Plumbing We Will Go" itself! The maze of pipes scene is redone real well with Shemp. There are also some new added plumbing scenes which are quite funny. The new plot addition was great, and adds even more excitement than just an episode in home disaster. The only problem with this one is that most of the footage with the hilarious Dudley Dickerson is from "A Plumbing We Will Go". But overall, an excellent remake well directed by the masterful stooge director Edward Bernds.

Grade: A

This short, as with a lot of the shorts made with Shemp, is merely a remake or better yet retread of something that was done far better the first time. In the late forties and early fifties, Columbia was trying to "kill off" their shorts department but were still contractually obligated to produce shorts with the Stooges. That didn't mean that they were going to write new stories or gags or at least keep the production levels as high as they were previously with Curly. Hence why they resorted to just redoing a lot of the earlier "Curly" shorts now with Shemp and some of these bits are funnier with Curly because they were written specifically for his character and not Shemp. All of this does a disservice to Shemp's own abilities and unique comedy style. Columbia was SO cheap at this time that they even would just edit clips from the earlier Stooge's shorts into these later ones with Shemp. For example, the scene with the cook dealing with the crazy faucet at the sink and the stove turned into a sprinkling system is a direct edit from the original 1940 "A Plumbing We Will Go." This is not a bad short but just not as good as the original.

VAGABOND LOAFERS is a reworking of the 1940 Curly classic A-PLUMBING WE WILL GO. Scenes from the original are used in this film, such as Larry digging a hole and Dudley Dickerson as a cook in the family kitchen. This short has great gags, but I won't spoil them for those who haven't seen it.

**** out of 4 stars.

Trivia- Remade as SCHEMING SCHEMERS in 1956.