Fuelin' Around

A professor who has possibly invented some new type of rocket fuel has three German-type spies outside his house waiting to pounce. Also inside the prof's house is his wife and, of course the Three Stooges who are doing some carpet-laying work....and screwing up with the normal slapstick results. The spies decide to capture the "prof" when he leaves the house. Unfortunately, they think Larry is the scientist and the other two guys must be his assistants. They kidnap the Stooges to the "State of Anemia." How well this will be received by you folks probably depends upon how may prior Stooges movies you've seen.

Almost all of the jokes and sight gags in here have been used before, except Curly was in them in earlier days. Heck, even if you've seen them they are still pretty funny. Shemp was always great at making facial reactions, so he can draw lots of laughs.

The usual cast is in here, too. It's amazing how many Three Stooges films in this period had Christine McIntyre, Emil Sitka, Vernon Dent, Philip Van Zant and even Jock Mahoney, who always played a handsome young guy with zero brains. Fortunately for Jock, he went on to bigger and better things, starring in his own western at one time.

I always liked Sitka, who was great at playing nerdy old professors. Actually, he was only about 35 years old when he made this but he was convincing as an older senile guy in a number of other Stooges shorts. Mahoney was also 30, but looked about 18 years old.

By the way, if you are a big Three Stooges fan, I really recommend these "Collection" edition DVDs that feature the boys in the films they did during three-year periods. The transfers are tremendous. I can't believe what a clear picture this is for something 60 years old.