You Nazty Spy!

Mel Brooks has often said that humor was probably the one weapon that the Jews had against the Nazis. The Three Stooges get there shots in at the Nazi Party with the short YOU NAZTY SPY! This was the first time that anyone in the movie business had the nerve to make fun of Adolf Hitler. Released in January of 1940 (over a year before the U.S. entered WWII), NAZTY SPY! beat Charlie Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR by nine months. YOU NAZTY SPY! starts with three men, Mr. Ixnay, Mr. Amscray and Mr. Ohnay discussing how they can keep their munitions business going when the king of the country of Moronica wants only peace. Their solution: Overthrow the king and install a dictator who will do their bidding. Their man: Wallpaper hanger Moe Hailstone (Moe Howard). There are also jobs for his assistants too, Gallstone (Curly Howard) and Pebble (Larry Fine).

The thing that really makes this work is Moe's uncanny resemblance to Der Fuerher and the subtle things that underscore the real-life situation like Hailstone's speech to the masses. It looks almost like the real thing. This short proves that the Stooges were indeed much more than mere slaps and eyepokes, and that they may have been a lot more intelligent off camera than people gave them credit for.

At a time in Hollywood when the movie colony was hesitant still to critique Nazi Germany even obliquely, three comedians of Jewish ancestry did a wonderful job in sending up the whole Nazi gang for a few belly laughs.

This Three Stooges short You Nazty Spy anticipated Charlie Chaplin's more famous The Great Dictator by several months. Chaplin might have gotten a few ideas from the boys, but their film was strictly slapstick without any serious message underpinning the short.

Moe makes one great Hitler and Larry and Curly aid and abet as the field marshal and propaganda minister. They do come to an end that I really wish that Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels had come.

An excellent Stooge short, and one of their best. Like everybody else said, it was very gutsy of the Stooges to make fun of Hitler in the pictures since nobody else had done it yet. I can't believe this wasn't nominated for an Academy Award like MEN IN BLACK (which I don't think is that great) was. Moe's Hitler impression is simply BRILLIANT, and the man deserves more recognition for it. This short is filled with hilarious, non-stop verbal puns and funny one-liners. One of the few Stooge shorts that dared to do this instead of relying almost fully on physical humor (TRICKY DICKS is another one filled with puns and one-liners, and that's also a great short), which proves the Stooges are excellent verbal comics as well as physical. This was sequeled a year later with the Stooges as I'LL NEVER HEIL AGAIN.

This was also the very first Stooge short from the early 40's, which was the Stooges' classic, Golden Age period.

This short just proves that the Stooges were not just slapstick masters, but that they were great social satirists. The boys were ahead of the curve by making a blatent parody of how Hitler came to power. The thing that made it more ironic was the fact that Moe, a Jew, plays a perfect Hitler characature and pulls it off convincingly. If you want to see some more of Moe's dead on imitation of Schikelgruber, just look at "They Stooge to Conga" and "I'll Never Heil Again" (the sequel to this short).

While the Three Stooges did tend to recycle jokes (Curly with the spring stuck to his rear end appeared often), "You Natzy Spy" is a complete turnaround. While not abandoning the prerequisite slapstick, the fact that this was filmed during World War II (albeit before America's participation, which at this point was almost inevitable anyway) starring three Jewish actors is stunning. From the Hitler moustache that Moe wears (which he removes to shave underneath and, when it is stolen, he yells, "gimme back my personality") to the name "Moronica" to the caricatures of Mussolini and (apparently) Hirohito, to the Axis world leaders battling over the world by throwing a globe around the room, to plenty more potshots at Hitler and his allies, "You Natzy Spy" is hilarious, but it really does have that underlying knowledge that, had Hitler won, the boys would have certainly met their early deaths. The guts and patriotism shown by the boys proves that they took their work seriously to say the least, risking their lives for their craft.