Goofs and Saddles

In one of their funniest shorts Moe, Curly and Larry go west as three of the most intrepid scouts of the frontier respectively Wild Bill Hiccup, Buffalo Bilious, and Just Plain Bill. With the Indian Wars done, the cavalry under General Muster is turning its attention to cattle rustlers and the General sends the boys to deal with him.

With quite a few laughs they do get the job done. Some wonderful bits as a jackass exposes the camouflage cover of three other jackasses. There's an interesting poker game and finally the Three Stooges with their backs to the wall improvise a Gatling gun to some very funny effects.

Moe, Larry, and Curly are really at their top in Goofs And Saddles.

This is one of the Stooges better efforts and one of their best westerns (apparently Moe didn't like doing westerns, but since they turned out to be very popular with their fans, Columbia overrode Moe's misgivings). Curly is at his peak, and there are some very funny and very clever gags (the boys disguising themselves as bushes to spy on the rustlers' camp, a "rigged" card game they play with the head bad guy, the great Stanley Blystone) and even Larry has more to do than usual, and does it well. The Stooges look like they were actually having fun making this one--Moe's aversion to westerns not withstanding--and it shows. A very good short by the boys.

Yikes, that subject headline quote what Three Stooges are told in this old TTS short. Imagine, if that was real life; there would still be no life west of the Mississippi!

In this Old West short, the Stooges play "Buffalo Bilous" (Curly), "Wild Bill Hiccup" (Moe) and "Just Plain Bill" (that's Larry for you, always in the middle between the lovable Curly and mean Moe.) Their mission is to get every last cattle rustler and either kill him or bring him in. The rustling has to end! Giving them the orders is "General Muster." Yeah, the writers of the Stooges short films sure loved to be corny went it came to names of people, cities, businesses, you name it.

The main foes for the good-guy cowboys are a group led by "Longhorn Pete (Stanley Blystone) who is one, tough hombre and won't take any baloney from the Buffalo Bilous and his partners.

Some of the things in here classic Three Stooges and guaranteed to have you laughing out loud. A few of the gags I really liked were when the guys pretended to be big bushes, the p.s. on the note to Gen. Muster written by the guys,and about everything involving Curly, from a donkey chewing his butt, to his vest, to his reactions to people at the bar, on and on. He was a hoot, as usual.

Buffalo Bilious (Curly Howard), Wild Bill Hiccup (Moe Howard), and Just Plain Bill (Larry Fine) are scouts working for the US Calvary. They are sent off to catch a gang of cattle rustlers. I would have done something more imaginative with the card game. Maybe the guys could somehow draw five jokers. The found note could be shorter and funnier. I do love the meat grinder idea. It's a fun way to use gunfight. This is fine Stooges.

I'm not a fan of Westerns, even parodies of Westerns, so when I finally sat down to watch this one I kinda groaned. That groan only lasted about two seconds, because the genius of the Stooges overwhelmed whatever trepidation I had about the genre.

It's also worth noting that this is now one of my favorite Stooges films because I always especially loved when they did gags with animals. This film includes not one or two or three but four animals key to the story, thus perhaps why I loved it so much, in spite of being averse to Westerns. Highly recommended, even if you hate the genre!