tavm Review of Punch Drunks

Punch Drunks (1934)

Punch Drunks started what became the standard Three Stooges characterizations

[8/10 · 30 December 2010]

What I'm reviewing here is the second short The Three Stooges made for Columbia and the first that established their characterizations once and for all: Moe is the bullying boss, Curley (that's the way his name was spelled at the time) is the childlike (and childish) innocent easily manipulated, and Larry is the one in the middle trying to just get along with whatever works for him. In this story written by all three, waiter Curley inadvertently becomes a boxer after fiddler Larry plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" at the restaurant Moe goes to when his fellow companions at the table get knocked out by the bald Stooge as the tune plays. I'll stop there and just say that the many gags as visualized by Lou Breslow provide enough laughs that make this short funny enough from beginning to end. Of special interest to me was finding out who plays the bored and sleepy bell ringer: Arthur Housman who usually plays drunks in the Laurel & Hardy shorts! He gets particularly highly amusing scenes whenever he gets one-upped by a boy that keeps throwing some food items to ring that bell before he gets to. So on that note, Punch Drunks gets a high recommendation from me. Oh, and seeing Curley bite his opponent's stomach made me think of when Mike Tyson did that to someone's ear and glad that's one thing a Stooge never did...