What's the Matador?

What's the Matador? (1942)

World's Champion Bull Throwers!

The stooges are actors traveling to perform at a fiesta in Mexico. After they accidentally switch suitcases with that of Dolores, a lovely senorita they met on trip down, they must sneak into her house to retrieve their suitcase. When they are confronted by her jealous husband he vows to kill them if he sees them again. At the fiesta where they are performing a comedy bullfight (Curly is the matador, Moe and Larry are in a bull costume) the husband bribes the attendants to let a real bull into the ring. Curly knocks the bull out with a head butt and becomes a hero.

Date of release
1942-04-23
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (13)
Runtime
17m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Jules White

Casting

Interesting facts

What's the Matador? is a 1942 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 62nd entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production notes

What's the Matador? was the last short filmed in 1941, shot on August 14–18 of that year. It was remade in 1959 as Sappy Bull Fighters, using minimal stock footage from the original. Footage was reused in the 1960 compilation feature film Stop! Look! and Laugh!

The film's title is a pun on the question "what's the matter?" The film itself is inspired by the popularity of the 1941 film Blood and Sand. While bullfighting is the reference, the two stories otherwise have nothing in common.

The Stooges have a frustrating exchange with an old Mexican local (Don Zelaya) when they ask if he has seen Dolores. Though his lengthy, involved, Spanish-language directions are incomprehensible to them, he actually says the following:

"Go down the street three blocks, turn right and go two more blocks, turn right, cross the square, and turn right. Walk down that street until you find an alley, but keep walking. Go down that street until you find another alley, but do not enter that alley. Turn right. There you will find a river. Do me a favor: jump into the river and drown yourself!"

DVD Talk critic Stuart Galbraith IV noted the beginnings of Curly Howard's physical decline, observing that "one can see the earliest signs of Curly's pre-stroke personality change. It's very subtle, and while he's still quite funny, one can see little changes in his screen persona, and about here he begins to age dramatically, with lines suddenly etched deep in his face."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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