The Three Stooges - Stooged & Confoosed (1940)

A quartet of Three Stooges shorts (three new to DVD) make up this solid disc, all with mid-period Curly in woo-woo-woo form. "Violent is the Word for Curly" somehow morphs the boys from gas-station attendants to European college professors. Not only does it feature Curly roasting on a spit, but the Stooges instruct the students of Mildew College for Women in the intricacies of "Swinging the Alphabet," a memorable nonsense song. "You Nazty Spy" is the Stooges' answer to Duck Soup and The Great Dictator, as a cabal of businessmen install Moe as the dictator of Moronika. With an accidental mustache and jibbering German, Moe does a convincing Hitler. (But didn't he always?)

"No Census, No Feeling" is a rangy, so-so bit that begins with a lame premise about the Stooges as census takers (it was 1940, after all) and ends up at a football game. But the best gag has Curly mixing up a noxious fruit punch. You know "An Ache in Every Stake" will be a goodie from the moment Moe and Larry attempt to remove a block of ice from around Curly's head by using a chisel and mallet. Its centerpiece is a variation on the flight of stairs from Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box," but Curly does nicely stuffing a turkey, too.

Stooged & Confoosed is presented with Columbia's "ChromaChoice" device, which allows for easy toggling between the original black-and-white shorts (which appear in great shape) and a colorized version. The colorized images are sensibly rendered, but they still have that washed-out paleness they've always had--eggshell greens and light browns abound. Stooges purists will stick to black-and-white, the better to appreciate the subtleties of a cheese grater being scraped across Curly's face. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

Includes a much-wanted episode but doesn't play correctly

I bought this DVD for my dad as a Christmas gift but unfortunately it isn't playing correctly. It skips back and forth between color and B&W mode in the middle of play and it stops abruptly at odd times.

I hope the replacement copy will play correctly! December 28, 2007

If they can make them look so great in B&W, why keep on colorizing them!!!

I love the old Stooges shorts. At less then twenty mintues, some of them have more laughs in then some full-length comedies today. I just wish the studio would continue restoring these shorts as well as they can in B&W and stop wasting their time colorizing them. Colorization is changing an artistic piece of work. I rented this DVD off of Netflix because I just wanted to see the shorts in black and white. They were in great condition. Please release a big collection of all the Stooges shorts with remastered sound and picture quality. I would buy it and I know hundreds of Stooges fans would, too. Just don't COLORIZE the shorts! May 24, 2007

the colour is brilliant !

The colour in these shorts is brilliant - it looks authentic for the era and highlights so much more detail in the scenes. One can now empathise with the action rather than view it simply as a relic of the dim past. The Stooges come alive as flesh and blood people, young and vital again! Let's hope the studio produces many more of these remastered and coloured shorts. April 2, 2007

You're gonna love the colorized episodes!

Screw the nitpickers! So what if there's only four episodes, it cost bucks to do colorization as good as this. And so far this is the best I've seen, and I have seen a lot. If you are into the Stooges you are gonna love the colorization and it has the option to be seen in B/W. I love it so much, I'm gonna purchase all the colorized dvd's. January 14, 2007

Colorization at it's Best

'The Three Stooges- Stooged and Confused', is without a doubt the best example of colorization I've seen, and couldn't have looked better had it been filmed in color to begin with! I can't understand those who criticise these discs, after all, you also get the original black & white prints, so how can you go wrong? O.K. as with all such discs, some shorts may be better than others, but that's just a matter of which ones are your favorites, but as far as the color goes, it's very realistic, and it's a great way to see the 'Stooges' as close as possible to how they would have been seen if color was the norm back in those days. I personally hope they do it to all of them.
Girvan Paterson, Melbourne, Australia. January 12, 2007

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