Funny / The Three Stooges

He does know he lit it, doesn't he?

It should be apparent to anyone who's smarter than the Stooges that they were kings of comedy.

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• One of the earliest examples being in Punch Drunks; Curly will slug anyone in sight if he hears a certain song. That song? Pop Goes the Weasel. There's something very amusing about someone kicking some butt to such a chipper classic.
  • Curly gives his jerkass boss Mr. McGurn a light bop on the chin and sends him straight into the air and on top of the ceiling fan.
  • During the final fight, Larry has to find another way to play "Pop Goes the Weasel" after Curly falls out of the ring onto him, crushing his violin. First he steals a radio, but that fails when the broadcast changes from the song to a children's storyteller, just as Curly is about to start fighting back, and Moe smashes it over his head in frustration. Then he finds a truck with speakers playing the song and brings it to the fight by driving it through the stadium wall, triggering Curly's Heroic Second Wind. When the fight is over, Moe and Larry are congratulating each other for the win when the song starts playing again. Cue Curly going back into berserker mode, knocking out Moe and Larry with one blow and, when there's nobody else in the ring to fight, he turns and walks menacingly towards the audience.
• At some point near the beginning of most shorts, a supporting character will talk about how they're expecting THREE people to arrive. One of those times where being Spoiled by the Format makes something funnier.
• In Dizzy Pilots, Moe falls into a tub of tar, and to get the tar off of him, Larry and Curly cut a hole in his clothes and begin filling it up with gas. Hilarity Ensues as Moe begins to float away when Larry and Curly aren't looking, and they spend the next sizable chunk of the episode trying to get Moe down as he sobs. He eventually floats through an opening in the ceiling and into the sky. Moe crying makes it ten times funnier.
  • The Stooges are stuck in a crashing plane, with Moe and Curly holding on to each other firmly in terror. What follows is this exchange:
    Larry: Hey, you two going steady? (Moe slaps Larry)
• The Running Gag in Horse Collars, where any time Curly sees a mouse, he goes batshit and clobbers everyone and everything around him while yelling "Moe! Larry! The cheese!" over and over. It comes to a head when he puts one arm into the sleeve of the villain's coat and repeatedly spins around punching the villain's sidekick, and then turning to let the villain catch his sidekick's retaliatory punches.
• In Monkey Businessmen, Curly kept running afoul with a one Nurse Shapely: the first time was when the boys were brought in, and she promptly slaps him in the face. Apparently, he didn't get the message the first time around: after she passes by Curly (while Moe and Larry were trapped in a steam room, he follows Nurse Shapely into a room just as the door was closing, a scream is immediately heard, followed by a very loud and very angry "HOW DARE YOU?!!", and Curly is literally sent crashing through the door... and the platter the nurse was carrying hits him on the head!
  Curly (indignant): OW! Oh! GRRR! I CAN TAKE A HINT!!!
• In Pop Goes The Easel, Moe stops a clay fight, and after everyone else in the room gathers around him he demands to know who started it. Larry says "YOU did!", Moe responds by angrily yelling "Oh YEAH?!", and then promptly spins around with his hand extended, slapping Larry, Curly and three or four other guys with one continuous slap.
  • The clay fight itself is one of the funniest "messy substance" fights of the Three Stooges, just because the clay looks so sticky and gross. The point where it hits a woman right in the behind is especially funny.
    Larry: (placing a flower on top of curly, who has a lump of clay on his head) Here's a flower for your hat, madam!
    Curly: (taking the clay off his head) Here's mud in your eye, mister! (shoves the clay in Larry's face)
• While Boobs in Arms is among their best shorts to begin with, the finale —starting with the Stooges accidentally bombing themselves with laughing gas and ending with them riding a speeding shell into the horizon while still madly cackling— is one of the most hysterically funny scenes of their entire filmography.
• The Shemp short Punchy Cowpunchers is chock full of these but some of the highlights include: one of the stooges tries to throw a horses' saddle onto a horse but instead the saddle flies over the horse and hits the police sergeant instead; Shemp going to strike a horseshoe against an anvil only for the shoe to fly off the anvil and hit the sergeant, the sergeant then getting pissed and lunging at Shemp and Shemp shoving him against a pillar where the sergeant is hit with several more horsehoes.
• The brief and inexplicably hilarious moment in Violent is the Word for Curly when Larry spaces out to the sound of birds chirping and Moe quickly slaps him back into reality.
• The following exchange in a couple shorts where Shemp gets his head stuck in a fish bowl:
  Shemp: *indecipherable mumbling*
  Moe: What did he say?
  Larry: Dedabudenawbububow!
• A really funny one which also counts as a CMoA for Curly happens in Calling All Curs. It starts off with Moe giving orders via the intercom which Curly refuses to do.
  Moe: Oh, mutiny eh?
  Curly: Yeah mutiny, and it ain't on the bounty! (STICKS OUT TONGUE)
  • Then Moe punches Curly through the intercom, in the face. Moe's head pokes out of the intercom, implying he went between the walls into it to hit Curly. However, Moe gets stuck there with his face still poking out of the intercom. Cue Curly plucking out Moe's eyebrows while saying "She loves me, she loves me not" over and over until the scene ends.
• In "Hoi Polloi," a dance teacher is about to teach the boys some dance moves when a bee goes down her back, causing her to gyrate, trying to get the bee out. The boys, thinking this is the dance, do the same. They end up following her as she jumps out the window and into a fountain.
• Curly's battle with the still-living oyster in his oyster stew, in the short "Dutiful But Dumb". Truly Curly at his best.
  • They had to stop filming at times because the crew couldn't stop laughing at Curly's reactions.
• Disorder in the Court has plenty, but one of the funniest is this mix up:
  Judge: Take off your hat.
  Curly: *Takes off his hat and holds it in his right hand*
  Court Clerk: Raise your right hand!
  Curly: *Irritably puts his hat back on his head and raises his right hand, holding a cane in his left hand*
  Court Clerk: Now put your left hand here!
  Curly: *Puts his cane in his right hand, lowering it, and putting his left hand on the bible*
  Judge: Please take off your hat.
  (process repeats a couple more times until eventually Curly puts the hat on his cane and raises his right hand while holding the cane with it)
  • Adding to the hilarity is the continuously increasing exasperation shown by the clerk, the judge, and Curly himself.
  • Eventually, the hat ends up on the Clerk's head, with Curly telling him "Now raise your right hand!" Which the Clerk does.
  • Curly mistaking the proper term to address the judge.
    Defense Attorney: Mr. Howard. Kindly tell the court what you know about the murder of Kirk Robin
    Curly: Well, it was like this, Mr. Court.
    Defense Attorney: Address the judge as "Your Honor".
    Curly: Well, it was like this, My Honor.
    Defense Attorney: YOUR Honor, not MY Honor!
    Curly: Why? Don't you like him?
  • Curly exasperating the judge with his constant use of slang when detailing the events.
  • Larry yelling after successfully getting rid of the gum.
    Moe: This is the court, not the jungle, Tarzan! *slaps him*
  • Curly knocking out half of the jury when attempting to reach the parrot. The loud sound effects and how each member barely reacts when Curly knocks them just makes it funnier.
  • There are way too many moments to list. No wonder it's considered one of their best shorts.
• In the short Idiots Deluxe, Moe is recovering from a nervous breakdown, guzzling medicine and pills and muttering "Oh my noives, oh my noives." A cat is seen quietly walking across the floor. Moe shouts "Quiet!! Quit stomping around!!" before throwing things at it.
  • Later in the episode Larry remarks that the place they chose to camp at is on good hunting grounds, because he saw a sign that said "Fine for Hunting".
  • In the same short is a scene where Larry and Curly are driving with an (unbeknownst to them) live bear in the back seat slapping them both in the back of the head repeatedly.
    Larry: What's the idea hittin' me in the head?
    Curly: I hit you because you hit me.
    [beat]
    Curly: I didn't hit you!
  • This little exchange near the end of the episode, after Curly and Larry thought Moe was dead, was brilliant:
    Curly: Poor Moe.
    Larry: Oh woe is Moe...
    Moe, coming at them with an ax: Oh woe is YOU!
    Larry: Woah, Moe!!
• In Ants in the Pantry the boys are called to the boss's desk for a job (they are exterminators. Larry has a bear trap.
  Moe: What's the idea of the bear trap?
  Larry: You never know, we might meet up with a bear.
  Moe: Yeah...Meet my bare hand! (slaps Larry)
  • Another funny part later in the episode occurs when someone tries to play the piano that the stooges had hidden several cats inside while secretly exterminating pests from a mansion (which they themselves infested). Hilarity ensues.
• The climax of the "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard" running gag in Men in Black.
  • Throughout the short, every time the boys leave Dr. Graves' office, Curly slams the door hard enough to break the glass. When they're summoned to his office for the last time, the maintenance man sees them coming and smashes the window himself with his tool box to let them through. (Afterwards, Moe and Larry jump through the window frame, but Curly still opens the door.)
  • One of the patients that the boys are sent to deal with suffers from an unspecified mental illness, which involves having hallucinations. Towards the end of the scene, the patient points out "great big giant green canaries" - right before a bird (albeit a parrot, not a canary) comes in through the open window and lands on Moe's shoulder. Seeing it causes the other Stooges to flee in terror and the patient to hurry back to his bed, but when Moe notices it himself, he thinks that he's lost his mind and dives into the patient's bed!
    Moe: (terrified) MOVE OVER! YOU GOT COMPANY!!
• In "The Ghost Talks" they meet 'Peeping Tom', a haunted suit of plate mail who watched lady Godiva ride through Coventry (and that mauls them when they try to remove it), at one point the boys have to remove a chest. It's too heavy so they start taking it piecemeal... only to discover its occupant, 'Red'. As Shemp says, "Ohhhh... Red Skeleton! For that matter the two skeletons playing a chess game were pretty good too: "Go on! Make your move! Don't sit there like you're dead!"
  • There's also Larry's face at the Red Skeleton quip.
• The scene from Higher Than a Kite, where Moe's head gets stuck in a pipe and Larry and Curly try to get him out with a crowbar and by heating the pipe over a fire. Then they put the pipe in a vice and try to pull Moe out, but his neck just stretches like rubber. Finally they twist him out.
  • From the same short, Larry's Disguised in Drag act, where he says in a mock-girl voice "I am Moronica!" while giving himself bangs. A Nazi officer immediately falls in love with him.
  • The Stooges fixing the officers car. He's happy at first since they got the annoying engine squeak out, but when he tries to drive away, the entire engine falls out in pieces. The Stooges quickly flee and hide in what they think is a sewer pipe. Its actually the casing for a bomb. They end up being dropped behind enemy lines, where they crush a nazi officer and steal his uniforms, except Larry who gets stuck with the women's clothes as noted above.
  • The Nazi colonel who shows up riding a ridiculous little scooter with a big swastika on it, and complains he isn't high ranked enough for anything more than an A Card.
    • Gets even better when you realize that Colonel's supposed to be Herman Goering.
  • Moe and Curly accidentally ruins the German war plans because they think its a checkers game, and completely screw up the plans.
    Officer: The infantry division in the Red Sea?!. The tanks at the North Pole?!
  • Curly barking at the photo of Adolf Hitler. Curly sticks that same photo on his backside later and uses it to escape the Germans; every time they see it they give the Nazi salute. However, this literally bites Curly on the ass when he gets bitten on the rump by an American POW: a Marine Corps bulldog.
• The "Maharaja" routine from Three Little Pirates.
  • Doubles as a Moment of Awesome for Curly, as this had been filmed while his health was in its decline (and his screen performances varied from "not too bad, considering" to cringe-worthy awful), yet he still managed to perform it flawlessly. (It helped that this was a routine that they had performed since their vaudeville days, and thus a familiar chestnut that even an ill Curly, who more and more had trouble memorizing and enunciating new lines to the point that directors had in some shorts reassigned the bulk of Curly's dialogue to Larry, could still summon up with perfect timing and delivery.) It's a very bittersweet scene for a Stooges fan to watch, knowing that it is the last gasp of "classic Curly" ever filmed.
  • The bar brawl towards the end.
  • When the Spanish governor has the Stooges thrown in a cell awaiting execution, his fiancee tries to help them escape by giving them mining tools to tunnel out with, via the closet. Problem is, they picked the wrong wall and just end up tunneling back into the cell
• Anytime Curly makes a wise crack, which Moe replies via physical force.
• The "Niagara Falls" sketch in Gents Without Cents, especially with Curly's Oh, Crap! reactions.
  • And how it ends...
• In their Professional Wrestling based short Grips, Grunts, and Groans, the climax in which a berserk Curly knocks out Moe and Larry before laying waste to virtually the entire ring crew with the ring bell before knocking himself unconscious is sidesplitting. Vince McMahon wishes he could put on as good a show.
• "A Plumbing We Will Go" is widely regarded as possibly the greatest short they ever made. From the classic image of Curly having trapped himself in a series of pipes◊ to Dudley Dickerson's battle with water-spraying appliances in the kitchen ("Dis house sho' gone crazy!"), it quite deserves the reputation.
  • In one scene, Moe and Curly are working in the basement with the pipes. Without turning around, Moe tells Curly to "Give me the torch!" Curly innocently turns around with it, ignoring that fact that it's turned on, and accidentally fries Moe's posterior.
  • From the same episodes, the boys find a pipe full of electrical wiring and yank it out before hooking it up to a water pipe. Hilarity Ensues.
    Curly: No wonder the water don't woik, the pipe is plugged up with wires!
    Moe: A fine place for wires!
  • At the start of the episode, the Stooges are on trial for stealing from a chicken coop, but are released due to lack of evidence. As they leave, Curly pulls out his cap from his pocket, only to release a cloud of feathers, which he claims is dandruff
  • Larry ruins the garden by digging around looking for the main water line.
• You can't say it's aged particularly well, but Spiffingham the butler in Heavenly Daze picks the funniest way to register his fright upon being told that Shemp's ghost is present:
  Spiffingham: *trembling* "Feet... why don't you get goin'?"
• There are two uproarious moments in The Tooth Will Out, in which the boys train to become dentists with the expected results. See here as they try making a set of dentures and produce something that looks like spare choppers for Frankenstein. And then they go west and we see the most comically gruesome dentist's appointment of all time. Not one to show someone with a phobia of dentists!
• One great one for Shemp was in the short Who Done It? Shemp and villainess Christine McIntyre go through a very funny sequence where she attempts to poison him and Shemp, showing some Genre Savvy actually switches the poison back a few times before she gets the best of him. Shemp, now poisoned, goes through the most hilarious convulsions and ends up flailing all over the floor until Moe and Larry finally help him.
• Another one from Shemp in Brideless Groom. He and Moe are tangled in phone wires and one of the shots comes up to see Moe's feet in Shemp's face.
  Shemp: Moe! Where's your hat?!
  • The entirety of the phone booth scene, really. Both from Moe and Shemp's antics inside the booth and Larry outside.
    Larry: (hailing a woman passing by) Hey, would you like to get married?^* To Shemp
    Woman: Married? Well, I don't know. You are kind of cute at that.
    Larry: Oh not me, I'm talking about him! (points to Shemp in the phone booth)
    (Shemp's contorted ugly mug is being pressed face-first against the side of the phone booth with the phone cord in his mouth)
    Woman: (screams, slaps Larry, and walks away)
  • While they're both tangled, Shemp furiously tells Moe to get his hand off of his face. Moe points out it isn't Moe's hand, but Shemp's own hand. Shemp says "All right, you asked for it!" and bites down hard. The result should be obvious.
  • From the same episode, Shemp's tone-deaf Abhorrent Admirer wailing her head off during her voice lessons with him. And when they get married at the end:
    Larry: You're married! Say something, kid!
    Shemp: HELP! HELP!
  • The climax, which has Shemp pretty much beaten up by an bevy of girls, all interested to inherit his money.
  • The scene where Christine McIntyre's character gives Shemp the beating of a lifetime cause she confused him with her cousin Basil, and "took advantage" of her. Mind you, she started all the kissing first!
    Larry: (hearing the trashing outside the room) Those kisses are gettin' intense.
• In Fuelin' Around, the villains and Moe and Larry are fighting over Shemp, who is trying to escape them through a hole in the floor. While they pull on Shemp, he's replaced with an obvious stunt dummy with a stretchy neck and legs, and Shemp doing a voice over of "My neck! My neck!"
• In one of the better Three Stooges movies, The Three Stooges in Orbit, the boys are hired by good-guy Mad Scientist Emil Sitka to provide security for his new invention, a sub/tank/helicopter that can fly in space which he calls an airborne what in Hel-- Oops.
  • In the movie, Three Stooges In Orbit, the Martians (who look like the Frankenstein Monster) are spying on the Stooges courtesy of an interstellar TV. They plan to invade and conquer the Earth until they cut into normal 50's American TV and see traffic jams, the Keystone Cops, and jitterbugging teenagers. After that? "Invasion Cancelled!... Blow the rotten planet up instead!".
  • At one point early on the boys confront a human-looking Martian spy. He pulls a ray gun on them, which they fearlessly confront — until he uses it to disintegrate the rifle they're holding. They immediately leave for a more congenial climate.
  • When the Mad Scientist tries to alert the authorities about the invading Martians, he calls the FBI and gets the following response from the agent unlucky enough to pick up the phone: "I'm very sorry, Professor, but all our people are busy chasing down a giant worm from Venus that's attacking Town Hall!"
  • At one point the boys use the Professor's invention to terrorize an Air Force base. As they almost run over a general, Larry yells, "Watch out or you'll knock him on his brass!"
  • Later on the Stooges see the Martian agents Ogg and Zogg speaking with their superiors in Martian. The boys translate it. How? They read the subtitles!
    • Also counts as Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
• A hilarious offscreen moment: while shooting the short You Nazty Spy!, Moe Howard discovered he was late for his daughter's birthday, so he hurriedly left the studio while still wearing his Hitler makeup. The LAPD got calls from motorists telling them they saw Hitler speeding down the freeway.
• There's the episode where the boys devise a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme by having Curly pretend to be barking mad (literally, he acts like he thinks he's a dog). At one point to convince the examining doctor he bites through a wooden table leg. It works very well and ends with Curly dragged off for a dangerous operation with these words to Moe and Larry:
  Doctor: "If the operation is a success, you can see him. If not, you can claim the body."
  • From the same short^note From Nurse To Worse, for the record: Curly manages to escape the operating theater, leaving through a side door. The next shot shows him rounding a corner and ducking through a door to apparent safety... except it is the same operating theater, with Vernon Dent and the other doctors pulling the most hilariously blasé "really?" expression as they watch Curly come through the door.
• Their very first physical comedy scene in ''Woman Haters", already sidesplitting on its own, becomes even more funny when you realize that they were probably improvising the whole thing.
• Curly's hard-head. It has been the running-gag in the Stooge films and never fails to surprise people at how it can DESTROY or ruin anything if it goes upside his head! Examples? Here's a list:
  • Bent a pick-axe tip in "Yes, We have No Bonanza".
  • Messed up the teeth of saws in "Oily To Bed, Oily To Rise", "In The Sweet Pie And Pie", and in Dizzy Pilots".
  • Ruined a drill bit in "Cookoo Caveliers".
  • Made a sledgehammer useless in "So Long Mr. Chumps" when Moe used said hammer to swat a hornet from Curly's head!
  • Crushed the butt of a service revolver in "Dizzy Detectives" when Moe smacked him in the head with it.
  • Blunted an axe head in "Idiots Deluxe".
  • Knocked a golf ball out of shape in "You Nazty Spy!"
  • An angry billy goat gets put in his place in "Even As I. O. U."
  • And yes, the bull promptly regrets butting heads with Curly in "What's the Matador".
  • Making this gag even funnier is the fact that Curly will almost always preface it with a bit of mood whiplash:
    Curly: (grasping his head in pain) OH! Oh! Oh! Oh... (pointing out the destroyed object) Oh, look!
• The failed TV pilot (known as Jerks Of All Trades):
  • The Stooges constantly mis-naming their first client, Mr. Pennyfeather.
  • "Well, ain't that quaint!" "'Ain't'? You mean 'isn't'." "Yeah, isn't that quisn't!" (smack!)
  • The entire scene with the eccentric slow-cooker salesman, which escalates into Duck Season, Rabbit Season and the stooges managing to sell the salesman his own slow-cooker.
    Moe: We seem to attract some of the oddest people!
• In What's the Matador, Curly, in a fit of anger, headbutts a charging bull head-on...causing the bull to crumple and instantly fall unconscious!
• In No Census, No Feeling, Moe is taking a door-to-door census. "Good morning, sir, I'm the census taker." he says. "Are you married or happy?" The man starts to respond only for a shrill woman's voice to scream "HENRYYYYYYYYYY!" from inside the house. The man ducks without even looking back into the house, and a thrown vase smashes into Moe's face, knocking him down the front steps. The man goes back inside without batting an eye. Similarly unfazed, Moe writes down "married."
• In Mummy's Dummies, the Stooges are used chariot salesmen in Ancient Egypt; their nicknames are Honest Moe, Honest Shemp, and... Larry. What does it say about Larry's track record that while his compatriots feel the need to conspicuously advertise their honesty, Larry can't even get away with that?
• The dungeon escape sequence from Squareheads of the Round Table:
  • First, just as the Stooges are about to give up on busting out of the cell after pounding on the lock with their tools, the door finally swings open. The Stooges only notice when Larry points out it's suddenly a bit drafty.
    Shemp: Well, no wonder. The door is open.
    Moe: Sure.
    (Beat; the Stooges do a Double Take and run out the cell door)
  • After stunning the jailer with a wooden stool and locking him in their cell, the Stooges try to get Cedric out of the neighboring cell when the guards come barging in. Moe points to the jailer and stammers out "See what that guy wants!", which distracts the guards just long enough for the Stooges to get past them.
  • The Scooby-Dooby Doors sequence is pretty funny on its own, from the various silly screams the Stooges make to Larry chasing one of the guards with his own sword to the Stooges using Deadly Dodging to get the guards to knock each other out.
• In Three Little Beers Moe totally wrecks the fairway by knocking about 90 divots out of the ground, and has only managed to advance the ball about maybe ten feet. Exasperated, he just scoops the ball up and throws it down the fairway like a baseball.
  • In the same episode, Curly mistakes a club washing station for a clothes-washing station. He strips down to his long-johns, sets up two clotheslines of wash and starts scrubbing his golf knickers, humming merrily.
• In Malice in the Palace, how the Stooges and their guests, mislead by improper sound effects, think Larry has chopped off a cat and a dog and served them for food.
• In Spooks, Shemp being terrified of a bat who, oddly enough, shares his face and his mannerisms.
  Shemp: What a hideous monstrous face! Oh! *covers himself*
• Sing a Song of Six Pants:
  • Larry battling with the "spot", eventually burning a hole through the fabric.
    Larry: That is the toughest spot I've ever tackled!
  • Similarly, Shemp vs. a pair of pants that had been rolled up in the blinds...immediately followed by Shemp vs. the iron board he was trying to press them on...immediately followed by Shemp vs. the door to the closet that the iron board goes in. It just isn't Shemp's day.
• The opera singer scene from Pardon My Scotch. Especially the flying pineapple at the end.
• In Saved by the Belle, the Stooges try to get out of prison by sawing on their prison bar cells with nail files, timing it to the guard slurping his soup. Then, an earthquake occurs and the Stooges are nearly knocked off their feet as a whole in the nearby wall drops. This exchange ensues:
  Moe: Boy, that was some shake! The biggest one yet!
  Curly: Hey, do you fellas feel a draft?!
  Moe: Why, certainly! It's from that hole in the wall over there!
  Curly looks over and sees the hole
  Curly: Ohhhhh!
  Larry: Come on, get busy! he and the others keep sawing via their nail files
  Señorita Rita runs up and gets on to the ledge
  Señorita Rita: Boys!
  The Stooges look over
  Señorita Rita: Come on!
  Curly: Be right with ya, toots!
  Moe: We'll be finished in a moment! Don't go away! Moe does a double take and then angrily drops his tools Come on, you dummies! Slaps Larry and Curly and shakes his hand and glares as they leave

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