Booby Dupes

While I don't expect comedic masterpieces from The Three Stooges, I do expect far better than you see in "Booby Dupes". Not only is it a bad remake of an excellent film (Laurel and Hardy's "Towed in a Hole"), but it has one glaring problem...it's not funny.

When the story begins, the trio are selling fish door to door. Curly comes up with the idea that if they catch the fish themselves, they'll get to keep all the money they earn. But they end up buying a small piece of junk boat and in the process they have an odd encounter with a plane that thinks they are Japanese!

As I said, this one isn't funny. And, to take an excellent Laurel and Hardy film and turn it into this is practically criminal. And, by the way, what's with the bizarre title and who came up with that?!

Larry, Curly, and Moe are selling fish out of their truck. Cats eat up their inventory. They need more fish and buy sailor uniforms to go fishing. Curly joins a beauty who comes with a jealous boyfriend. The guys buy a boat which has many problems. They go fishing and have even more problems. The boys are fun. This one works from start to finish. Curly drilling holes in the boat to let the water out is inventive and hilarious.

Long-time Three Stooges director Del Lord turned 50 when he finally got word he was ending his association with the comedy team to fulfill his cherished dream of directing feature films. After handling over three dozens of the Stooges' Columbia Pictures short films, Lord's final one with Curly was March 1945's "Booby Dupes." Ten years earlier, Lord was asked to direct March 1935's "Pop Goes the Easel," his first in a long line of his involvement with Stooges comedies. His imprint on refining the Stooges' schtick is incalculable, smoothing out their rough edges while having them deliver a constant stream of superb gags. The Ontario, Canadian Lord was introduced to movies as one of the Keystone Cops' drivers for fellow Canadian Mack Sennett's studio. Graduating to director, Lord specialized in filming car sequences, containing explosive and crashing automobiles. Several studios later, Lord's brilliant direction saw him specializing in Stooges' comedies, where he both scripted and directed the talented trio. Once he left Columbia's short film division to move over to its feature film unit, Lord's forte was in musicals and comedies. He did returned briefly to direct a handful of short films, including one with the Stooges, this time with Shemp, who replaced the ailing Curly.

"Booby Dupes" title derives on the Fleischer Studios' early 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop and her trademark singing 'boom-pop-a-doop.' The Stooges are fish salesmen who realize they can make more money by catching fish instead of buying through a middle man. They exchange their dilapidated car for a fragile boat. Once out to sea, the intrepid Stooges face a spiteful aggressive fish streaming water into Curly's face, and an United States Air Corps plane lobbing bombs at them thinking they're Japanese after seeing Moe waving a white rescue flag with a red paint spot in the middle. Del Lord, who also wrote the script, remembered the Laurel and Hardy 1932 short 'Towed in a Hole' with a similar plot. This was the last Stooges film to have the lady with the torch seen in the opening credits.

This short is pretty mixed because there are some scenes I liked and some that I didn't like. The scene in which the stooges fix the boat was great. The beginning was good too, but the fishing scene deducts the grade a bit, because it was done rather weakly and wasn't that funny. But there was a funny scene in which Larry tells Moe to shut up. It was funny because it was out of character for Larry to do that. The scene with Curly hiding from the boyfriend I really didn't like because it wandered from the plot and it was just filler because they couldn't think of anything else. Overall, I would say this is an okay short with some funny moments.

Grade: C

This short subject finds the 3 Stooges as fish peddlers and doing about as well as they do in other occupations. But they get the brilliant idea of becoming fishermen and selling their catch wholesale. What the Fulton Fish Market in New York wouldn't do to keep these guys away.

Once at sea in a pair of ramshackle rowboats the boys have their usual monkeyshines trying to learn their new trade. Curly has a bout with a flying fish and need I tell you who won?

But adding insult to injury when they sink one boat and get to the second, trying to get attention they raise a white flag for rescue. A passing plane sees the white flag and because of certain stains thinks it Japanese.

What was unusual about this was that at the very end Moe has a good idea from getting away from the bombs dropping all around. Can't tell what it is. But Stooge fans everywhere will appreciate it.