Spook Louder

Scriptwriters for the Three Stooges dug deep in their memory holes to dig up comedy skits of the past to give the comedy team material to work with. Early film historians can trace some of the Stooges' brilliant routines from past movies. A prime example is April 1943's "Spook Louder," set in an old dark house where the boys are scared every second by disguised enemy spies dressed in Halloween costumes intent on capturing a top scientist's 'Death Ray.' Film reviewer Dave Sindelar notes, "The Stooges had a way of packing a whole movie's worth of gags into a seventeen minute short, and this one is great fun." One of the key mysteries in "Spook Louder" is why and who is throwing pies at the Stooges and the professor who relates the tale to a reporter of the trio's adventures. Diligent research reveals the answer to the mysterious pie throwing can be traced to the 1931 Mack Sennett comedy, 'The Great Pie Mystery,' with Harry Gribbon and May Boley. Writer Clyde Bruckman, who had a habit of modifying older movie gags for the Stooges, was credited for adopting the pie-in-the-face gag into the story of their night in the inventor's house. Coincidentally, Del Lord directed both the Sennett film and "Spook Louder." The Stooges open "Spook Louder" as weight reduction machine salesmen who knock on the door on the house of an inventor who's planning to drum up interest of his a 'death-ray' machine to government officials in Washington, D. C. His butler answering the door is played by actor Charles Middleton in his only Stooges' film. Fans of the "Flash Gordon" serials will recognize him as Ming the Merciless. Meanwhile the inventor is acted by Ted Torch, who played the High Priest in the same Flash Gordon serial. The inventor asks the three to housesit for the weekend while he's away in D. C. That evening, three spies, intent on stealing the machine, go about scaring the Stooges. Writer Bruckman sketched the gag showing Curly unknowingly tethered to a balloon with a face drawn on it. The balloon, hooked onto the back of his sweater, frightens everyone he meets, a skit taken from Harry Langdon's 1929 comedy film "The Big Kick." The movie is also the first to show Moe's hair rising when scared.