Stoogemania

My review was written in June 1986 after watching the movie on Paramount video cassette.

Take a faulty concept and execute it ineptly and you have "Stoogemania", feature-length filler intended as homage to The Three Stooges. Understandably never trade-screened, Atlantic release had a few regional playdates in October and is now available on video cassette.

Filmmaker Chuck Workman, better known as a director of coming attractions trailers as well as the poor B-picture "Kill Castro", attempts here to cash in on the ongoing craze among young folks for the Stooges, which recently has pushed the late lowbrow comedians to the top of the heap in terms of screen team popularity.

Poor Josh Mostel is cast as a stoogemaniac, a young man whose life is falling apart due to his obsession with the Stooges. He wants to marry girlfriend Beverly (Melanie Chartoff) but is afraid her parents will object to him. Oddly enough, they approve but he gets cold feet and ultimately ends up in a mental home for stoogemaniacs. Sappy happy ending has them get married with the puerile message that it's okay to love the Stooges.

Film makes all the wrong moves, starting with the unforgivable boner of including mainly Shemp Howard 1940s editions of the Stooges in the film clips. Shemp certainly is okay and had an interesting solo career, but "Stoogemania" should be primarily about original stooge Jerry (Curly) Howard. Curly does appear in a few clips, but fans are bound to be bewildered and disappointed. Quality of the film clips chosen is quite variable as is the mode of presentation. Essentially, Mostel keeps dreaming or hallucinating about the Stooges, cuing poorly selected excerpts. Centerpieces here are Shemp plus Larry Fine and Moe Howard in a marriage sketch and Curly & teammates in a courtroom skit.

At one point, Workman incompetently attempts a "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' gambit of matching old and new footage. Sloppily added color (credited to Color Systems Technology) to the Stooges' original material is drab and smeared, as well as failing to fill the whole frame (walls and a couch occasionally are left gray & white). Use of colorization in several sequences is pointless in context: original 1932 MGM Stooges shorts exist that were filmed in color as well as the 1961 feature "Snow White and the Three Stooges" featuring Joe de Rita as the third Stooge, but none of this material is used.

For no good reason, several segments of the new Mostel scenes (or Josh Miller as the Young Mostel) are presented in black & white to match the original Stooges' work in this mishmash. When all else fails, Workman adds inappropriate rock songs to drown out the action. True to his trailer maker roots, he has a filler montage at the end, not of additional material but merely a recap of Stooges' scenes already used earlier.

Mostel tries hard but his slapstick routines aren't funny. Best bit is by Mark Holton (effective as the villain last year in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure") doing a nice Curly impression as a fellow stoogemaniac. Sid Caesar guest stars doing his mittle-European professor shtick as a shrink who diagnoses Mostel's problem. Hopefully no one will do a fan's tribute to Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" that's as shoddy as this feature.

This is an incredibly bad exploitation film. They took four comparatively weak public domain Stooge films and strung the worst plot imaginable around it. Horrible performances by all, including Sid Caeser (believe it or not), the Three Stooges Imitators, and that Mr. Krull guy. Horrible.

Yes Because of How Stooge Humor outside of the Stooges is not funny and because it's only funny in the way that they do it. As Leonard Maltin said it's well meaning but a completely unfunny tale of Howard F. Howard .Who's passion for the 3 stooges has overtaken his life.Incorporates real footage and while most of it is far from their best,it's still vastly superior to the new material in this feature.For those who care,some of the Stooge footage is computer-colorized. I also really do praise Leonard Maltin for his critiques he's very lenient but still in some instances still does well when leniency is not deserved.

Next to add to this on 4/19/2020 : I even came to it wearing my 3 stooges shirt of which I'd gotten for Christmas almost 2 years prior and some guy said"Look he's got a 3 stooges shirt."after the movie that guy even was taking a closer look after we got out of that theater. Coitainy, Stephen "Steve" G. Baer a.k.a."Ste"of Framingham,Ma.

Especially liked the fact that Stooge Row was at the corner of Shaddup and Nyook Nyook Street. I think I saw the movie in the late 80s when it had already been out for a few years. I was never a big fan of the show when I was little but I wasn't one of those kids whose mom refused to let him watch it because they were afraid he would poke someone'eyes out or take a saw over the top of someone's head. It has a cult following much like This is Spinal Tap does, so if you like it, you will REALLY like it. May be hard to find. I watched it on a VHS tape, it may or may not be available on DVD. I guess I'd try to get it from Netflix first.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I really liked it. The ways in which stooge clips are inserted is very good, the movie has great original music. Curly enthusiasts will be disappointed in the fact that three of the four films used are Shemps, but overall it's a funny and even sometimes poignant comedy. Josh Mostel is perfect in the lead, and the ensemble of stooge enthusiasts and impersonators he meets on the street and at "Stooge Hills" (the world's first "stoogeatorium", devoted exclusively to the treatment of the "mental illness" known as stoogemania) is very entertaining.

Real Stooge historians will appreciate a brief appearance by the late Paul "Mousie" Garner as the arcade owner. You see the Stooge Hills authorities corner him and say in an intimidating tone "Hello there...MOUSE!", to which Mouse replies "Goodbye!" and runs, or rather does the "funky chicken" out of harm's way.