Violent Is the Word for Curly

Boy, have times changed, at least at gas stations in America.

In this film, we see the days in which you got a lot of personal service when you pulled up next to the pumps. It's exaggerated here.....big time! In this movie, the boys, who just got employed at the Acme Service Station, give you their version of "super service."

"Super service" with the Stooges means they not only will put gas in your automobile, but check the spark plugs, polish the car, oil and grease it, put water in the radiator, wash it, and give you a shave and haircut, press your pants and a lot more and three professors at the college find out when they pull into the station. They especially find out when the idiots put gas in the radiator and water in the gas tank!

That lunacy is just the start in this extremely wacky Stooges film. Soon, a frozen Curly is put on a spit and barbecued. Soon after that, the boys are mistaken for the professors - the ones the blew up at the gas station.

After that, well, I don't want to spoil everything. Suffice to say the boys - as professors' "Feinstein," "Frankfurter' and "von Stupid" - would be a little unorthodox in their teaching! It is a funny film and a good representation of the total craziness of Curly, Larry and Moe in the late '30s.

NOTES - Gladys Gale is a dead-ringer for Margaret Dumont, the foil in many of the Marx Brothers film. Gale plays "Mrs. Katsby," the head of a Mildew College, a women's college. In her snobbish tones, while watching gym class, she says things like, "In my day, we kept our noses in books and didn't around dressed like fan dancers!"

"Oh, mother," replies her very-hot daughter, played by Marjorie Deanne, who wears a revealing blouse. I am surprised that got by the censor.

The famous silent comedian, Charley Chase, directed this one. I think he did about a half dozen Three Stooges shorts in the late 1930s.