Three Pests in a Mess

Three Pests in a Mess (1945)

The stooges are three inventors trying to a get a patent on their preposterous fly catching invention. When they learn they'll have to catch 100,000 flies to earn enough to get a patent, some crooks overhear and think the boys are the $100,000 sweepstakes winners. When the crooks give chase, the stooges hide in a sporting goods store where Curly shoots a dummy, which they mistake for a real person. The boys decide to bury the "body" in a pet cemetery, but the cemetery owner arrives from a costume party with his partners, all dressed as spooks, and they proceed to scare the devil out of the stooges.

Date of release
1945-01-19
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (7)
Runtime
15m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Del Lord

Casting

Interesting facts

Three Pests in a Mess is a 1945 short subject written and directed by Del Lord starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 83rd entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production notes

Three Pests in a Mess was filmed on June 22–26, 1944. It is a partial remake of the 1933 Paramount Pictures short film Sailors Beware! (also directed by Del Lord) and 1941 Columbia short film Ready, Willing But Unable. The concept of men trolling through a cemetery with a dead body dates back to Laurel and Hardy's 1928 silent film Habeas Corpus.

The syncopated, jazz-tinged version of "Three Blind Mice", first heard in Gents Without Cents, makes its return with this film. This version would be used for the next two releases, as well as Three Loan Wolves, before being retired permanently. This version is played in the key of F major, while the key of G major was previously utilized.

This is the ninth of sixteen Stooge shorts with the word "three" in the title.

Curly's "Call for Philip Black" mimics the popular 'Call for Philip Morris' cigarette advertisements of the period.

A prop man dug a hole and covered it with rubber to achieve the effect of Larry sliding under the door at the cemetery. They quickly pulled him under, and filmed the shot as a speed shot.

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

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