The
New Three Stooges: The Complete Cartoon Series - 40th
Anniversary Collection
(1965/Animated/Image Madacy DVD Set)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C+ Episodes: B
At
the end of their run of classic theatrical film shorts, The Three
Stooges were already embracing television as Columbia heavily
syndicated their catalog, they were making feature films, TV
appearances, personal appearances across the country and reinventing
themselves for a new generation of children by curbing some of their
semi-violent slapstick. With the Curly Joe configuration of the trio
in full gear, they and their family decided that they should
independently produce something they had never moved into before:
animation!
Cambria
Studios had previously made series like Clutch
Cargo,
Space
Angel
and Captain
Fathom
had drawings with human mouths superimposed to save money on the
animation and known as Syncro-Vox. That was not going to work here
and this became (with the Heritage and Normandy companies) their most
successful series. Instead of going to one of the Big Three
networks, the producers decided to syndicate the show, the result was
a very popular hit that that rounded off the trio's success as a
phenomenon and The
New Three Stooges
gave them a permanent image and hold in the world of animation.
The
show ran on stations across the country everywhere until the early
1980s on its own or mixed with other packages some stations assembled
for local children's television programming. A remarkable 156
animated shorts were produced, mixed with 40 live action slapstick
shorts in color especially shot for this series. The
Complete Cartoon Series - 40th
Anniversary Collection
(1965) has every single one of them collected in total for the first
time ever, anywhere and in any format. We've been waiting for this
one for years and finally, here it is.
The
animated shorts are as fun as I remembered, simple, charming and an
more fun spirited than you might expect, plus the animated world
meant animated conventions and rules, so they would play on many of
them and break many others. It is the most underrated chapter of the
trio's history and they have been out of circulation for far too long
with a few bad video copies here and there extremely poor and
unacceptable.
As
good as anything Laurel & Hardy or Abbott & Costello did for
TV (and they both had their moments in the medium), the shorts have
still amusing and clever titles like Bee
My Honey,
Turnabout
Is Bear Play,
Knight
Without End,
The
Three Astronutz,
Tee
For Three,
Souperman,
Gagster
Dragster,
From
Bad To Verse,
Toys
Will Be Toys,
The
Men From UCLA
(a Man
From UNCLE
nod), The
Three Marketeers,
Waiter
Minute,
Pow
Row Wow,
How
The West Was Once,
Let's
Shoot The Player Piano Players,
Dentist
The Menace,
Safari
So Good,
Their
Auto Be A Law,
To
Kill A Clockingbird,
Wash
My Line,
Suture
Self,
Phony
Express,
Peter
Panic,
Wizards
Of Odd,
Aloha
Ha Ha,
Land
Ho Ho Ho,
Call
Of The While,
Which
Is Witch,
Late
For Launch,
Tree
Is A Crowd,
Surfs
You Right,
Curly's
Birthday A-Go-Go,
Rug-A-Bye
Baby,
Ready..
Jetset.. Go
and No
Money, No Honey
that should tell you what to expect. Nice they live up to what they
set for themselves.
Though
some of this is a little dated in its limited animation and some
politically incorrect moments and a few characters, this otherwise
remains very family friendly and come as a surprise to fans of the
short films as well as those who might not usually be fans of the
trio's more relative violent slapstick. Along with the syndicated
Popeye animated TV shots of the early 1960s, this series helped to
build syndication as we know it today showing that there was big
money in original programming, and for children in addition to
classic TV shows, live action shorts and animated cartoon shorts
which did very well for the longest time.
I
also like the live action shorts and wish there were more of them
made. Totally compatible with the animated shorts, the trio still
had their comic timing (they had just cameoed in the huge hit film
comedy It's
A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
(1963) in fine form) so they were still on top of things and this set
is evidence of that.
If
you have any memory of how colorful this show really was or have seen
the better still images and hard-to-find animation cels on the series
(which will undoubtedly increase in value as a result of the release
of this set), you know it looks really good and for decades, awful,
washed out, scratched and prints that should have been incinerated
have been circulating on VHS, Beta, 12-inch LaserDisc and lesser DVDs
to the detriment of this show. Though I have my issues with what we
see here, the 1.33 X 1 image through the four DVDs are the best the
show has looked outside of film prints that have not faded on home
video to date. However, color is inconsistent, sometimes muted and
all the transfers are on the soft side as if they came from late
standard-definition masters. The live-action footage filmed of the
actual Stooges of the time all originate on 16mm color film and they
are also varied in appearance.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on all episodes and segments show their
age with harmonic distortion, background noise, compression and other
flaws, but at least it is not always too low in volume. However,
audio can vary in clarity from show to show and the opening of many
of the shows sound better than the shows themselves. The Stooges'
estate needs to go back at some point, get the film masters to all
these shows, spend the money to restore them and preserve them for
future HD and film posterity. This is the definitive set of the
series, but some of that is by default and the show deserves the
upgraded treatment like Courageous
Cat & Minute Mouse,
where you could see how good the color was on their DVD set, but the
prints were more dirty and scratched than these, yet they too deserve
restoration. Unfortunately, animated series from TV from the 1940s
up to the 1970s do not get the respect they deserve, especially
independent productions like these, so extra advocacy to save them in
total is needed.
There
is only one extra in this great heavy paperboard foldout packaging
and that is a CD of two album collections of the trio singing. The
first half is a dozen children's songs to Sing-A-Long with and the
latter 11 are Christmas Songs. That is a very convenient double
album to include and a pleasant surprise that goes perfect with these
episodes. Which we had some more extras like commentaries or press
materials to launch the show. Hope some of that survived.
The
Three Stooges have remained popular all these decades later and an HD
wave of their work seems the next logical step along possibly with a
3D animated feature. A recent revival with all new actors did not
work, but Sony has issued all their live action shorts on DVD,
including the two in 3D with the old red/blue glasses (reviewed
elsewhere on this site) and as this show continued to play
nationwide, The Stooges surfaced on two episodes of The
New Scooby-Doo Movies,
the hour-long first sequel to the original show and Hanna-Barbera
optioned them again, turning them into silly bionic robots for a
second TV series!
However,
it was not as good or as successful as this first show and it
disappeared faster even as they stayed big favorites. The
New Three Stooges
is a minor classic of TV animation and is long overdue for full
rediscovery. Now you can see in this very complete set.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
