I Scream

The year Shemp Howard appeared in this short was the same year his brothers, Moe and Curly, were initially appearing in a series of shorts for Columbia Pictures which ended up running for years. So maybe it shouldn't be a big surprise that some Stooge trademarks-like the eye poke and the nostril pulling-is prevalent here. In fact, he and Lionel Stander perform it with the leading comic, a person named Gus Shy. Don't really want to reveal any more, just say that I highly recommend I Scream!

Up until I bought a DVD set of Vitaphone's comedy shorts, I'd never heard of Guy Shy. This comedian(?) apparently made 10 films in his career--most for Vitaphone. In the first Shy short I saw, he played a drunk...and the short was very unfunny and ponderous ("Paul Revere Jr."). Is "I Scream" any better?

The plot for "I Scream" is very novel. It seems some overzealous insurance agent has been writing policies for mobsters...and in one week the company had to pay out on 47 policies because of a gang war!! So, they want to find some dumbbell to go to the mobs and get them to setting their differences and stop killing each other. It just happens that an ice cream man (Shy) is there during the meeting and they decide to send him! Oddly, he accepts...mostly because they never tell him about the gang war and he has no idea what he's getting into!

The film is quite funny...which just goes to show you Shy COULD be funny if he had good material. He also had good support in the form of Lionel Stander and Shemp Howard! All in all, highly original, funny and worth seeing...to my utter astonishment!