Spooks!

This was a truly hilarious short, 3-D or no 3-D. There were so many visual gags, including the one where the bat is actually Shemp barking like Curly.

But one of the most notable things about this short is how Shemp shows himself as a hipster when he learns they are looking for Bea Bopper. He responds by saying such hip terms as "Hey man!" and "Cool, Daddy-O!" It begs the question: Who came first, James Dean or Shemp Howard? And I think I know the answer to this one! I almost think Shemp was a a '60s person before his time: A meek guy who had longish, limp hair, who used hip expressions!!! Oh, the things you learn in Stooge shorts!!! No wonder why these shorts are great!! Chalk up another classic for these three goofs!!

Moe, Larry, and Shemp have decided to take up detective work and they get their first client when a man reports that his daughter has been abducted.

With the highly original disguise of people giving away free pies as a promotion in the neighborhood, the boys start knocking on doors hoping to locate the missing young lady, Norma Randall. A few well chosen screams give the idea that something is amiss at one location.

Spooks is a combination of the Bela Lugosi/Ritz Brothers film The Gorilla and Abbott&Costello Meet Frankenstein. A couple of scientists Philip Van Zandt and Tom Kennedy are working on transferring the woman's brain into their body. Why they would want to do that to a pretty young thing like Randall shows how mad these scientists are. She's not happy and the gorilla is real resistant to the idea.

Don't forget about those pies, saved for the climax. Spooks is ripped off from those other classics, yet the Stooges bring their own unique brand of burlesque humor. It's even in 3-D.

This *might* have been a great short, the materials are certainly there. But the attempt at making this a 3-D film slows it down. Whenever a scene showing off the effect comes up, the film stops dead cold. Was this entertaining when you saw it in a theater? Maybe, but when you watch it on TV, you're only aware of how it slows down the pace. All this is unfortunate because there are a lot of good gags and lines in the picture, which would have made it one of the better shorts of the Shemp era (indeed, perhaps of *any* era), but with the way it stops like that, it makes it uncomfortable to sit through.

On a local Television station I saw this funny Three Stooges in true 3D! There was another one in 3D called Pardon My Backfire! Spooks! was really already in 3D like when Moe would do his stuff like kicking Shemp or when one of the bad guys did something it would come right into the screen! What I mean by true 3D is that it had the color like the famous colors! It was a cool experience!

Spooks! is a good one! Philip Van Zandt and Tom Kennedy played their parts very good! The gorilla is funny! It has a very spook nature like some of the other Three Stooges shorts which like them, Spooks! is great to watch around Halloween time! Like the other 3D short, this too has the different introduction with the stooges doing it live instead of the usual intro! With the 3D experience or without it Spooks! is a very funny Three Stooges to short watch!

Larry, Moe, and Shemp are three amoral bumbling private detectives hired to find the missing Mary 'Bea' Bopper. They go disguised as pie salesmen and find her kidnapped by Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. The two mad scientists are working to exchange Mary's brain with a gorilla.

It's a Halloween 3 Stooges in 3D. It's got all silly 3D cheese throwing everything at the screen. There is something about the guys' ridiculous physical comedy that really works with cheesy 3D. I don't know how it actually looks though. It's black and white. I don't know if black and white can be turned into actual 3D. Nevertheless, this is lots of light fun.