Wednesday, October 20, 2010

THE THREE STOOGES in SPOOK LOUDER - Thomas Ravenscroft - "Three Blind Mice"

For tonight's Halloween Countdown feature, we have what amounts to more of a What The Heck Wednesday than WTF?! but we're talkin' about The Stooges here, so it doesn't really matter now, does it? I'll tell you one thing that's really WTF?! more than anything about a lot of the old Three Stooges shorts, they were almost entirely devoid of music! The theme song for this episode was "Three Blind Mice," a nursery rhyme written in 1609 by English composer Thomas Ravenscroft! Later on they would use a weird version of "Listen to the Mockingbird" written by Septimus Winner in 1855, and "Pop Goes The Weasel" was also used!

"Spook Louder" starts off in the office of Special Investigator J.O. Dunkfeather, who was played by Lew Kelly, one of those guys that movies couldn't do without, a man with over 200 movie titles, many uncredited, in such classic roles as the stagehand in "The Mad Ghoul," or the bartender in "The Mummy's Tomb!" Here he is the teller of the tale!

In this episode, Larry, Moe, and Curly are door to door salesmen. I don't know who the mysterious tall gal is!

Curly demonstrates the weight reduction machine they are trying to pawn off on the unsuspecting public!

They end up at the spooky house of a Mr. Graves, and are greeted by his butler, played by Charles Middleton, probably best known for his role as Emperor Ming the Merciless, in the "Flash Gordon" serials!

Graves explains that he needs to go to Washington to demonstrate a Death Ray he has invented, and asks the boys to house sit for him! Graves was played by Theodore Lorch, another veteran of the "Flash Gordon" series, and more Stooges! His very first role was the title character in a 1908 short titled "Shamus O'Brien."

Larry, Moe, and Curly end up having to deal with these spy guys lead by the guy in the middle, Stanley Blystone, who just might hold The Dungeon record for being in 517 different titles of movies, shorts, and TV shows! The list goes on forever!

The boys get spooked by some piano music, since they are supposed to be in the house alone, but it turns out to only be a "Kitten on the Keys! That's also the name of a 78 I own by pianist Freddie Slack!

Stanley Blystone finds himself on the receiving end of the first pie thrown!

A creepy hand takes Moe by surprise!

I got him, I got him!! Curly is clueless to the fact that he's got Moe, and not one of the intruders!

Curly gets a balloon on a string, with a face on it, stuck to his posterior, and manages to not only scare himself, but the other two Stooges too!

Another good shot of Curly when he gets scared by a mummified body!!

The spies close in, but The Stooges have a bomb that Curly lights accidently, and blows up just enough of the joint to scare the spies away!

The boys are the ones to get the final pies thrown at them by some mysterious unidentified character, and then it's over! The Three Stooges made almost 200 of these shorts! Curly was in the first 97, and there is no reason why you shouldn't try and see each and every one of them! They're everywhere!

4 comments:

Prof. Grewbeard said...

i used to wake up with the Stooges every morning before school, i remember when they first started showing them in town, i went to school the next day and every kid was doing the Curly schtick all day long!...

TABONGA! said...

I wanna go to Stooge Heaven when I die!!

Christopher said...

spook louder..I don't understand..
lol..I can just see some merry olde dude playing 3 blind mice on his lute in 1609..dressed in cheap 2-reeler style period waredrobe.
..dame lulian
dame lulian
...the Miller and his merry olde wife,shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife..

Suzanne said...

What a great old episode! I have always been one to wait for my fav tv sitcoms to come out with their halloween episodes every year (esp Roseanne and Home Improvement) and it looks like the kids back then had the same fun!

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??