3 Stooges: Dopey Dicks [VHS]
There is good Shemping in all three films in this entry in the Columbia series of Three Stooges shorts. "Dopey Dicks" (1949, short number 122) reruns some old Curly material (no surprise!) in which a mad scientist wants a brain for his evil experiments. Most of the footage is concerned with the boys being chased by the doctor and his evil assistant as they try to rescue Christine McIntyre and escape the blades aimed at their necks. Shemp's reactions are priceless and there is a lot of good fun here."Scrambled Brains" (1951, number 132) is said to have been among Shemp's favorites, and certainly what plot there is centers around his need to recover from a bout of hallucinations, all the while planning to marry an extremely ugly nurse he met while under treatment. The gem of this film is a new use of the old "third hand" routine that was a cliché even when Stan Laurel used it inA Chump at Oxfordmany years earlier. Emil Sitka gets to play a nearsighted doctor who, while inspecting Shemp, leans forward on his rocking chair to make a doll say "Mama" with the usual double takes from one and all.Shemp himself uses what looks like Sitka's glasses as an utterly incompetent dentist in "The Tooth Will Out (1951, number 134). Having barely passed a one-week course in dentistry, the boys go West to set up practice, and one almost feels the pain as half-blind Shemp stabs wildly at his first patient with a whirring drill. Possibly the idea--not very original to begin with--was influenced by Shemp's nearsighted explorer in the Abbott and CostelloAfrica Screamsonly a year or two before this short.--Frank Behrens