It goes without saying that the Three Stooges are one of the most
important screen comedy teams of the 20th century, and an inspiration
to generations of screen comics that followed. Following their start as a traveling act in venues across the country, the trio’s film career began in
the early 1930s, reached its slapstick peak during their decades-long
tenure at Columbia Pictures, and lasted well into the 1950s. After their initial
retirement late in that decade, television reruns helped reintroduce
them, at home and abroad, to a new generation of kids and adults alike,
and their enthusiastic reception certainly indicates an abiding love
for anarchic silliness. The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Four collects 21 chronologically ordered short films from 1943 to 1945.

At the time of this material, the
vaudeville-born Stooges were no longer some mere novelty act seeking
attention in the still nascent world of filmed entertainment; they had
achieved huge fame, and their countrywide personal appearances, of which
there were many, were frequently mobbed. Naturally, even with such
mainstream embrace (or perhaps because of it), there were cultural warriors who viewed the Stooges’ eye-poking, head-slapping, pie-tossing antics as too violent, and crusaded to have them banished. Thankfully, their efforts didn’t succeed.

Kicking things off is the violent, very funny They Stooge to Conga, which features the
Stooges, cast as handymen, going to work fixing a lady’s doorbell, only to realize that the home
they’re working on is run by Nazi spies. Similarly war-influenced, Back From the Front casts the
Stooges as Merchant Marines who go behind enemy lines after their ship is sunk by the
Germans. In Three Little Twirps, meanwhile, the guys go to work for a circus, but
get scammed on their salaries and turn to ticket scalping, with dangerous (and hilarious) results.

The set’s second disc is anchored by classics like Micro-Phonies and Crash Goes the Hash,
the latter of which casts the Stooges as investigatory reporters
assigned to get to the bottom of the plans of a prince out to marry a
wealthy widower. Testing the bounds of political incorrectness, meanwhile, is The Yoke’s on Me, which will certainly evoke a few winces at its portrayal of Japanese soldiers. Also included are Dizzy Detectives, Spook Louder, Idle Roomers, Gents Without Cents, No Dough Boys, Higher Than a Kite, Three Pests in a Mess, I Can Hardly Wait, Booby Dupes, Dizzy Pilots, Idiots Deluxe, Phoney Express, If a Body Meets a Body and A Gem of a Jam. Of the 21 shorts collected here, only the lazy, quarter-sketched cow-milking-themed Busy Buddies is a real misfire; regular bit players like Vernon Dent and Bud Jamison provide much amusement too.

As with the other releases, this fourth volume comes presented on two
discs in slimline cases that are in turn stored in a cardboard
slipcover; the unifying color scheme this time is purple, which should delight a small group of rabid Kansas State fans. The shorts
themselves are shot in black-and-white and presented in 1.33:1 full
screen, with a Dolby digital mono audio track. Apart from a small
handful of unrelated preview trailers for other Sony releases, there is
unfortunately no supplemental material, a serial fact established by the other releases in the series. As I’ve said, this
cuts two ways; the six-hour-plus running time of the celebrated
material — certainly anyone’s chief measuring stick for value — makes
for plenty of entertainment, and
its straightforward cataloging is invaluable. Still, to register
the same complaint again, just a brief
talking-head retrospective or two would help contextually root the
material for a lot of younger viewers for whom the term “classic
comedy” perhaps only means Eddie Murphy, circa Raw. To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. A- (Movies) C+ (Disc)