Alongside the great comedy teams of film history, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello and Martin & Lewis, The Three Stooges stand out for their uninhibited slapstick comedy. Sony Pictures debuts The Three Stooges: Hapless Half-Wits, featuring the masters of mayhem at their best. The trio star in four short subjects–Beer Barrel Polecats, Ill Never Heil Again, Dopey Dicks and Brideless Grooms–each restored from the original negative for the best visual and audio quality.
These shorts have the added feature of the Color+B&W production process designed to increase the appeal of classic black & white films to a new generation of viewers. Each film was extensively researched in advance and exhaustive efforts were made to utilize as many original source elements as possible. The original black & white masters have been faithfully restored, then subsequently remastered in full 1080i hi-definition video for the highest picture quality. Finally, with the color design help of West Wing Studios, who referenced Columbia Pictures archives production items (props, cloth swatches), artists were able to achieve the highest level of historical accuracy in the images.
The Three Stooges: Hapless Half-Wits also features ChromaChoice, which allows viewers to toggle between the original black & white and colorized version of the films in a seamless manner using the DVD remote.
Ill Never Heil Again (1940)
A follow up to You Nazty Spy, the Stooges have taken over the country of Moronica, where Moe is Hailstone the Dictator, Curly is a Field Marshal and Larry is Minister of Propaganda. They are planning to conquer the world, however, the former king’s daughter gets into their headquarters and plants a bomb which Curly detonates. All ends well as the king regains control of the country and the stooges wind up as trophies on the wall.
Beer Barrel Polecats (1945)
The boys make a whole batch of homemade beer, but get tossed in jail when Curly sells some to a cop. Their minor indiscretion turns into a 40-year sentence when a keg of beer Curly has hidden under his coat explodes while the boys are being photographed. In prison the Stooges get into more trouble with the warden and wind on the rockpile when they try to escape. Released as old men with long gray beards, the first thing Curly wants is a bottle of beer.
Dopey Dicks (1949)
The boys become detectives and go to the aid of a girl in the clutches of a mad scientist. The boys arrive at a spooky mansion where the madman is building a mechanical man that needs a human head. After declining the offer to supply one of theirs for the experiment, they find the girl and escape, only to wind up in a car driven by the headless robot.
Brideless Grooms (1947)
Shemp Howard is a vocal coach whose most adoring student is a homely young miss. As soon as her lesson is over, Moe and Larry show up and inform him that his Uncle Caleb has left him a half a million dollars provided he is married by six o’clock that evening. Shemp needs a bride in a hurry, and after a series of mishaps, he has no choice but to take his awful voice student to the altar. As the justice of the peace (Emil Sitka) is preparing to wed them, mayhem breaks out as an angry group of Shemp’s former girlfriends show up, battling furiously to become Shemp’s bride.
DVD Special Features:
* Digitally Remastered Audio and Video
* Full Screen Presentations
* Color+B&W production process
* ChromaChoice
* Audio: English (Mono)
* Bonus Previews
* Closed Captioned
The Three Stooges: Hapless Half-Wits has a run time of 137 minutes and is not rated.
