Home on the Rage

Shemp Howard made several short comedies for Columbia before ultimately rejoining The Three Stooges following his brother Curly's stroke. Most of these shorts Shemp made without his brothers fall into two main types--with Shemp being accused by his wife of cheating or with Shemp being one of the most annoying people in film history. "Home on the Rage" is one of these annoying person films!

Andy (Andy Clyde) is expecting a big business deal. However, his visiting brother-in-law, Happy (Shemp), ruins the deal and does nothing but annoy Andy. Later, through a mix-up Andy thinks his wife and Happy are planning on killing him...when they really are talking about killing Andy's vicious dog. So Andy spends most of the rest of the film protecting himself from an assumed attack.

Andy Clyde and Shemp Howard made five Columbia shorts together and their vastly different comedic registers didn't mesh well. Shemp was always on, with twitches and schemes. Andy was gentler, slower to act and yet he was the lead comic in these pieces. So in this movie, when Andy thinks that brother-in-law Shemp and wife Lela Bliss want to murder him for his insurance, his only friend is his dog, Ace, who has just moved over from RKO to Columbia.

The whole thing is a pretty much run-of-the-mill Columbia short, sustained by the comedy chops of the leads and the fact that Ace is a handsome animal who is clearly having a lot of fun in his role.