Beer Barrel Polecats

I got the new volume, Vol. 5, of the Three Stooges collected episodes yesterday. This will be the last one with Curly, since he retired after "Half-Wits' Holiday," except for a brief appearance in "Hold That Lion."

According to a book I've got, "The Three Stooges Scrapbook," Curly wasn't feeling up to the full film shooting schedule. His health was failing. So with the first episode on this set, "Beer Barrel Polecats," they made extensive use of footage from previous films. That's annoying.

One of the sections was from the episode "So Long, Mr. Chumps," in which they have to find a guy and they find him in prison. His name is Pomeroy. The footage makes perfect sense in the context of "Chumps," but it's quite incongruous in "Beer Barrel Polecats." Finding Pomeroy is just a weird, odd, inexplicable juxtaposed bit of nonsense in "Polecats." So Curly must have been feeling terrible!

Another way of looking at it is they weren't really making these films for us, for posterity, to be watched at home over and over. That's my guess. They were just showing them before the main feature and nobody really cared. So we ought to be glad they're as good as they are.

There's another section from an earlier film as well, as involving being in prison. That section ends with big rocks being broken over Curly's head. But he objects to the final rock, because it's a real rock. The earlier film had the theme music come in there and that was the hilarious conclusion. They definitely fade it out quicker than most cuts, making the earlier film's conclusion just a conclusion to a scene later. Very weird.