Rockin' Thru the Rockies

In The Stooges' short film, March 1940 "Rockin' thru the Rockies," Jules White directed his fifth straight Stooges' short, finding the three as guides leading 'Nell's Belles,' three female entertainers with matron Nell (Katheryn Sheldon) as their chaperone supervisor, through the Indian-infested Rockies to their destination San Francisco. Strangely, the Stooges' 1945 feature film, 'Rockin' Thru the Rockies,' shares the same name as this 1940 short. Curly pays homage to Columbia Pictures' 1934 Academy Awards Best Picture winner "It Happened One Night." He mutters Clark Gables' famous line, "The walls of Jericho are falling," when he stumbles through a blanket-hung wall separating the ladies from the men inside a prefab stage cabin scampering from an intruding bear in their sleeping quarters. Gable labeled the wall 'Jericho' he set up made of bedsheets shielding him from Claudette Colbert in their shared motel room.

"Rockin' Thru the Rockies" was Lorna Gray's final Stooges' film before she left Columbia for Republic Pictures, where she excelled mostly in Westerns. Appearing as one of Nell's Belles was actress Dorothy Appleby, a former winner of the Miss Maine contest who was chosen by Rudolph Valentino as the prettiest of her competitors. The short is also known for Curly's enthusiastic chant, "Give 'em the axe, giving 'em the axe, right in the neck, right in the neck," a variation of Stanford University's well-known student body shout during football games popular during that era.

Daisy, Flossie, and Tessie are performers for the traveling road show Nell's Belles. Larry, Curly, and Moe are frontier guides protecting the ladies traveling from Kansas to San Francisco. Indians order them to leave Indian territories. Their horses run away and they are stuck.

The girls are a missed opportunity. They barely have anything to do. The Indians have more screen presence. The girls may as well be empty dresses. The boys do their stuff but they don't have good partners. All in all, it's perfectly good Stooges short but it could be even better.

Rockin' Thru the Rockies (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Moe, Larry and Curly are taking four showgirls from Kansas to San Francisco but they get held up in the Rockies where they soon come under attack from Indians. The Indians warn them to get out by the next night or else but the Stooges lose their horses and have to come up with a different route of escape. The Western setting is one that the Stooges used quite often and once again it's perfectly used in this very funny entry that manages to have all the classic violence that you'll love as well as several great routines. One of the highlights of the film has the boys going ice fishing and of course they keep falling into the water and even manage to catch a "fish that looks like Moe." The stuff dealing with the Indians isn't the funniest written parts but there are a few good moments where there's a redskin joke and the end chase is funny even if it doesn't pay off too well. As you'd expect, the violence level here is pretty high as all three men are getting slap and punched but Moe gets to take a few violent cracks over the head with an axe and the abuse he takes during the fishing sequence is priceless. Another great sequence has the boys sleeping together during a frigid night and the aftermath in the morning is hysterical to say the least. Fans of the Stooges will enjoy this short and those unfamiliar with the group will also find themselves laughing.

This is a mostly routine Three Stooges comedy, but it has some funny moments. This time, the boys are acting as guides for a group of women who are traveling west as part of a stage show, trying to protect the women from Indians, in their usual efficient manner. The funniest part might be the scene of the three of them trying to ice fish. Most of the other gags are pretty familiar, but are worth a few laughs.

In this sort the boys are heading west but they run into indians that tell them to leave or they will die, but before they can go they have to get there wagon fixed. This had some funny moments in it like Curly's snap slap thing and when they go fishing and Larry tries to save Moe who fell in, I won't say anything else just see for yourself.