Nericus

True, their good nature and dimwitted nature did make them the butt of many jokes and get them in trouble in the skits. I always laugh when they try to mix with "high society".

However a lot of people also overlook the topical nature of some of their skits and how they'd poke fun at certain things of the era:

1. They come home from the service and see their girls sitting outside with all the furniture "We've been dispossessed, its a new American tradition!"

2. They are working as exterminators and their boss is complaining about the lack of work of late and his secretary comments "Now that prosperity is back, everyone is working". Also "I heard them talking politics", the boss says "politics", shes says they said it was time for a "new deal". The new deal comment of course being about card games but also a tribute to FDR's comment about a "new deal" to get us out of the depression.

3. All the skits where they either imitated or battled the Nazi's, or both. Moe is the first in hollywood to suit and imitate Adolph (man did he do a great job and the resemblance...). There was also the skit where as workers they end up in a 5th column home and Moe sees the cardboard standee of Adolph and gives it the eyepoke. They try to escape, the hall is blocked so he suits up and takes the place of the standee. The officer speaks to what he thinks is the standee and says "Heil!" Moe responds "Heel!", they do a double take and get hit from behind by Larry. Yes some episodes also contained jokes about the Japanese or had the stooges combat the Japanese and their nazi allies. Those episodes may be considered "uncool" now by many, but some of those same people tend to forget the year they made those skits and a certain event at the time called World War 2.

4. After WW2, some of their "skit enemies" would evolve with the times. There was the Shemp episodes where they dealt with a Russian spy who had microfilm hidden in some watermelons. There was the other skit where they thought Larry was a professor that was developing a new super rocket fuel. Some of the Joe Besser skits dealt with UFO's, space travel and the stooges going to the planet SUNEV (Venus).

5. If the Stooges were making skits in the here and now I have little doubt they'd have some where they battle the terrorists and try to battle Osama.

Yeah a lot of the skits had the pretty woman in them, either as ally or enemy. Most of the time the female lead was for the Stooges to be chivalrous towards and try to help out of trouble. Some of them were out to get the Stooges of course.

Well they were good natured morons in the skits, but there is a difference in being slow on the uptake or confused about some things and being flat out dumb. Case in point the Dumb and Dumber movie characters IQ vs the IQ of the Three Stooges characters. While neither group should be called rocket scientists, I'd bet money on the Stooges passing an IQ test with better results then the Dumb and Dumber characters

I agree it's not much of a stretch, I'm just not a big fan of "Jack---".

Yes dark humor, morbid humor, even gallows humor as well as satire are all elements of Dredd. Still the fact that one of Dredd's creators was on the set during making the current film and liked what he saw is a promising sign. I suspect the movie will be a hit overseas where the franchise hails from, and may be more of a cult hit over here. We'll see.

Just keep the helmet ON

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah he was the last of the originals to die, with Larry preceding him by a few months.


As to new people taking the Stooges name....well it was tried. De Rita did get Moe's blessing to try a "new stooges" act that bombed pretty hard. Ted Healy tried some "new stooges" in his act after Moe, Larry and Curly finally dumped him, but that failed to. Sometimes it is best to just leave a legend like the Stooges alone and enjoy their classics on DVD. Maybe this new movie will be a hit, but I am understandably dubious. Also the new trailer implying they were the original "jack----s".....well I chalk that up as trying to appeal to the younger fan base.

I do have some confidence in IDW. As a third party comic company they do release some good stuff. Dark Horse though, i.m.o., has lost it a long time ago.

DC tried to sanitize Dredd a bit too much and for a character like him that just won't work. Technically you could say he's Punisher with a badge, and that may end up being how he's portrayed by IDW, but that would still not be a correct interpretation in my opinion. He acts within the laws of Mega City One and the authority that all judges have, he just takes it to extremes at times. There was one time, he fatally shot someone that was resisting. The person's crimes mandated a life sentence, so Dredd has the guy put in suspended animation so that they can be healed one day and then put in prison to serve their sentence. A tad extreme perhaps, but hey....Dredd IS the law

I hope the new movie does well enough to merit a sequel and that Judge Death is the sequel villain.

Figured I'd try support again for grins and got the usual "wait for the patch" response.

Moe the only original thing about the Stooges? Uhmmmm.....

As to whether this movie is something that Moe, Larry and Curly would have wanted, well they always wanted big screen movies and they did make some back in the DeRita days.

As to whether the Stooges think this movie will be any good....we may never know.


Some dumbing down a.k.a. censoring of what they do is to be expected.

Heck, some of the classic stooge skits revolved around trying to get some quick cash for assorted reasons:

1. So a kid can have his leg surgically repaired
2. Find gold so they can get rich and help their mother
3. Work up some cash due to Curly's wife expecting a kid anytime

and more.

Yeah I've been reading about that, and I have that proverbial bad feeling about it. Anyone here remember when DC Comics was trying to make original Dredd material? Yuck.

Yeah, you don't see many teams like that. Brothers and friends all the way to the end.

Also a lot of people forget too that Shemp had perhaps the best solo career of all the Stooges after he left during the Healy era, and Shemp helped design a lot of the stunts in the beginning and it was Shemp that came up with the eye poke stunt during an intense card game.

If you have Netflix do search using Three Stooges and look not for the discs of the classic skits that we all know and love, but look instead for any discs with their early works, or any "lost footage" discs, or documentaries. There is some footage of them on the Steve Allen show performing on stage with Curly Joe. One time they did an updated version of the "Maha Raja" skit that Curly did so well, and another time they were filming movie scenes with Moe as director, Larry as the star, and Curly Joe as the "stunt double" for Larry.

I'm not fond of badges being yanked, but it's been done before. While true that newer players will never catch up in terms of vet badges, the same can also be said of the Anniversary badges too. Still, if they can't fix them or come up with a way for us to manually claim them, then purge them.

In a few months I'll be down TWO vet badges if they don't do something. If they can't get them working again, then as much as some people will hate this idea I'm going to post it anyway: remove them from the game. As compensation for the removal of the yearly vet badges, offer either a choice of character slot/transfer per badge that was removed or else perhaps something like 500 or 1000 paragon points per badge removed.

I don't like the idea of badges being removed but something must be done.

Can't please everyone. Frankly I'd rather see the yearly vet badges fixed. Or if they cannot restore the auto rewarding of the badges, then set it up where we can visit one of the Ouro vendors to "claim" the vet badge.

Example: player logs in and gets in game message or email congratulating them on another year of VIP that instructs them to go to Ouro to speak to the vendor to claim their new Vet badge.

Well with server transfers now in abundance, perhaps Plan A for Passport should be enabled? Transfer alt = badge, but now comes the question: account wide badge or just for the alt that moved?

Didn't they say that Passport was somehow going to become available again?

The classic Stooge skits were never aimed at kids, but for all ages. When television started and the skits went into syndication/reruns, that is when they realized "Uh oh!" and toned the violence down and stopped the eye poke.

I agree about Disney though.

Most of the time there was a roomful of people in a Stooge skit you could expect a pie fight

Moe + Larry + Shemp = original incarnation of the Stooges

Moe + Larry + Curly = best known, best loved incarnation of the Stooges. Curly replaced Shemp during the Ted Healy days, Shemp returned after Curly's stroke during making of Half Wits Holiday

Moe + Larry + Joe Besser (brought in after Shemp died) = worst version of the Stooges. But I don't put all the blame on Joe. Moe and Larry were starting to feel and show the years, the budget was slashed considerably, and about 8 of the 16 or so skits with Joe were just remakes of Curly or Shemp skits. Joe not being into all the slapstick didn't help.

Moe + Larry + Curly Joe DeRita = perhaps the most unknown or overlooked incarnation. Yeah they toned down the violence a bit, but Curly Joe was a good stooge and was the closest they ever got to a copy of Curly. They even brought back some classic Curly routines with DeRita like the Maha Rajha, the pop Goes the Weasel song driving Curly berzerk, and some others. They did live appearances, appeared on shows, did commercials and movies.

Moe + Emil Sitka (as Harry) + Curly Joe = the final version that never got started. Emil Sitka replaced Larry after he suffered a stroke while making Kook's Tour, but before this version of the Stooges got started, Moe's health began to decline. Emil was going to play a character named Harry. For those that don't remember Emil: he first appeared as the butler in Half Wits Holiday, and is perhaps best known for his line "Hold Hands you love birds" from the skit with Shemp needing to get married to inherent a fortune. Emil is considered the 7th Stooge even if the act with him as Harry never got started.

Yeah I tend to shake my head that people think the Loony Toons are too violent yet some of the same people approve of the Simpsons or Beavis and Butthead or Southpark....

....double standards perhaps?

Go back and watch some of the vintage Loony Toons eps from the very early days and it's clear they weren't meant for kids, some of the creators stated that Loony Toons was their version of the Simpsons.

Well the new trailer did have the disclaimer about how the stunts were done by trained professionals and to not try them at home.

In the Stooges first big screen movie "Have Rocket Will Travel" they used the eye poke only once and then after that they retired it due to all the complaints about kids trying the eye poke but with hazardous results. When they made the following movie "Around the World in a Daze", another character that was acting like the Stooges did the eye poke and Moe said "Ah, ah! That's maneuver #21, we don't do that any more. Now we do #47!" and slapped the target. Also there are some lost interviews and I think some commercials where they demonstrated some of their classics including the eye poke and warned people to not try these things themselves.

Still in a way, it's a shame that people only remember the Stooges for the violence and not for some of the history they made with some of their routines. Such as Moe Howard being the first one to suit up and parody Adolf (Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator was 9 months later). Better yet, here's a funny legend: when they filmed "I'll Never Heil Again" Moe was in such a hurry to get home for his daughter's birthday party he totally forgot to change out of his "Hailstone the Dictator" attire. People were seeing him speeding home in his car and calling the authorities thinking it was old Adolph himself speeding through the streets!

Also some of the pop culture or pokes at current society of the times in some of their skits.
"We have jobs now! We're working for the census!"
Curly's response "You mean Will Hays?"
Moe: "No the census! The Census!"

Will Hays was the one that pretty much started censorship back then.

So now comes the question: will it fail on its own merits or because of automatic condemnation by Stooge fans?

I'm thinking it will be both.

No sneak-fix came in the patch. Perhaps they could call it "Gate-Crasher" or "Gate Wrecker" or "Open Sesame" or "Open SAYS ME!"

+1 Internet to you, sir!