Ants in the Pantry

My wife has always said she hates the Three Stooges. However, one day I was watching "Ants in the Pantry" and I caught my wife laughing at the boys' antics. I don't think I'll ever let her forget this! So this means that even a non-Stooge fan will probably like this one.

The boys are working for a pest control company but business has been slow. So their boss tells them to drum up business or they're fired. So, they take a suitcase full of moths, mice, ants and other vermin and they being releasing it in some rich folks' home so they'll call for exterminators!

This is one of the funnier film by the trio...as it's quite original and filled with laughs. Seeing the Stooges putting mice on people and ants on cakes and the like is pretty funny on a visceral level. And, while it sounds pretty dumb, watching Larry smacking everything with a hammer is good for a few laughs...as well as Curly eating that 'poppy seed cake'. Great fun.

This pretty good Three Stooges short has them as pest exterminators under threat of losing their job if they do not "drum up" business; to this end, they infest a house in a posh quarter with mice and all kinds of bugs – so that they can then offer their services to rid the upper-class owners of the 'problem'! While the central idea could hardly fail to be entertaining (given also that the landlady's throwing a party and doesn't want her snobbish guests to become aware of the unhealthy environment inside her house), having watched a number of these Stooges shorts, it's becoming increasingly evident that not only the boys' routines are repeated from one film to the next but even the backdrops against which they're set! That said, it's a likable enough vehicle – with, thankfully, a restrained Curley…and an especially cute scene in which a bagful of kittens is hidden inside a piano, which starts playing 'by itself' when a celebrated performer sits down to give a recital! By the way, director White used the pseudonym Preston Black for this one (and a few more Stooges titles from the first Columbia set).

Ants in the Pantry (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The Three Stooges are working as exterminators but when business is slow they decide to plant the insects themselves, which just leads to trouble. All the jokes here are rather hit and miss with most of them being misses but this short is still pretty entertaining. There's a "cut the hards" scenes, which was borrowed from the Marx Brothers but it's pretty funny here as is another scene where the boys start a dance after a guy gets a mouse down his back.

Now available on Columbia's 2-disc set, which features over 20 shorts, all remastered.

Larry, Curly, and Moe are the incompetent workers at the failing Lightning Pest Control Co. They plant pests in a mansion and get themselves hired. The mansion is holding a high class party and they have to work without being noticed. Of course, nothing goes right and the boys unleash chaos.

I'm surprised that Curly didn't get a concussion even if the hammer is rubber. The cats in the piano is a funny new bit although I wouldn't have the party goers laugh. It's always funnier if they're horrified. It does take the premise to a whole different place and that's some good hilarity. The fox hunt does feel like an add-on. It may be better to end the story at the mansion.

The boys play exterminators whose jobs are threatened unless they drum up some business. Invading a swank party, they proceed to litter the mansion with mice, moths, and ants. Hired by the mansion matriarch (Clara Kimball Young) to clean up the place, the Stooges are dressed in fox hunting outfits to match her guest's clothes. Will the Stooges finish the job despite themselves?

"Ants in the Pantry" offers top-notch Stooge nonsense with pleasant results. The "Cossack Dance" is offered in a Stooge film for the first time. This dance occurs when someone gets something down their back. In this case, a party guest gets a mouse down their shirt collar, and he leaps and wails. The Stooges, thinking he's dancing, begin clapping their hands in unison and dancing around in their own maniacal way. The "Cossack Dance" is seen in several of their films over the series' long run.

An early classic. 9 out of 10.