They Stooge to Conga (1943)

Truly Dreadful Film

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Directed by Del Lord, "They Stooge to Conga" is arguably the most violent Three Stooges film ever made. Larry, Curly, and Moe are repairmen who wreck the doorbell wiring in someone's house and later bungle the neighborhood telephone wiring before they realize they've stumbled upon a Nazi hideout! Memorable sequences: This short contains the most graphic piece of Stooge violence involving Curly's climbing spike! (Almost equalling that is the circular wood blade applied to Curly's nose!) Curly and Larry pull Moe through a wall upon searching the house for a live wire. The chef, played by Dudley Dickerson, manages to steal the show with his few scenes; he gets shoved away by Moe, gets splatted with a bowl of batter, reacts to an exploding telephone, and gets a waffle iron stuck on his behind.Back in 1943, when "They Stooge to Conga" was first released, I'm sure that the excessively violent gags in this film caused theatergoers to cringe (today, those gags would be NOTHING). All I can say is this: It's a good thing all those props the Stooges used to whack each other were fake!

I saw this one years ago and one scene has stayed with me. Moe walks into a room, sees a portrait of Hitler, stops in his tracks, and cries, "Schickelgruber!" The body language and intonation convey a perfect combination of surprise, fear, and revulsion, but in the use of the name "Schickelgruber," he simultaneously conveys contempt. Here at the height of World War II, Moe managed in just a second or two with his facial expression, movement, and tone of voice, to perfectly capture the nation's disgust and loathing toward the Nazis and especially their leader, while figuratively sticking his tongue out or thumbing his nose or whatever on our behalf at the same time.Moe's talent went way beyond the bullying "boss stooge;" here we see his brilliance as a social and political satirist captured in one quick moment.

This short contains the most violent gag in Stooge history. The spike from Curly's shoe goes into Moe's eye! How could Del Lord and Hugh McCollum allow such a gag? This was more in the style of Jules White. I would like to note that these "violent beyond any doubt to be funny" gags are really few and far between in the Three Stooges canon. They did make 190 short subjects for Columbia! The other over the top violent gags I can think of consist of the following: the wire, nose, ear gag in "Pardon My Backfire", the bellows gag in "Corny Casanovas", the Christmas lights down Moe's throat gag in "He Cooked His Goose", and "Half Shot Shooters" almost in its entirety. It must be noted that it was not the Stooges shorts alone that engaged in cruel comic violence. These kind of gags can be found in other Columbia short comedies, especially those directed by Jules White. Lest we forget, Stan Laurel had a cruel, violent streak in his comedy as well.

In this short (another the Stooges did that makes blatant fan of Hitler), the Stooges are fix-it men who are assigned to repair the wiring at a mansion which is actually the hideout of a group of Nazis. The Stooges are their usual inept selves particularly when they try to find the trouble by sending Curly to scale a telephone pole resulting in some of the most violent scenes ever filmed by the Stooges (Moe and Larry apply a pipe wrench to Curly's nose and press his nose against a revolving grindstone; Curly accidentally stabs Moe in the scalp, ear, and (gulp!) eye (shudder!); Moe burns Curly's rear with a blow torch; Curly is electrocuted by the wires to the point where they can light up a light bulb by sticking it in his ear). Eventually, though, their ineptness leads to victory on their behalf when they destroy the house, foul up the Nazi's directions over their air radio, and generally render the Nazis incapable. Very funny stuff, if you can stomach the over-the-top violence in this one (the spike in the eye bit repulses almost everyone who watches it). RECOMMENDED