Thursday, February 24, 2011

What if...decent chemical warfare were used


Okay, I am a fan of the Three Stooges and I saw an episode [Boobs in Arms (1940)] the other day. I realize that nasty chemical warfare is prohibited but what if nitrous oxide [laughing gas] were used?

Plot [Wikipedia]

The short fits neatly into three parts. In the beginning the Stooges are street peddler greeting card salesmen who anger a man on the street after an accidental altercation. They are then approached by a woman (Evelyn Young) with a request to help her make her husband (Richard Fiske) jealous. The Stooges defend themselves against the irate husband with their usual combatives and flee from the husband shouting his threats. In hiding from him, they line up on a queue that takes them to a recruitment office by mistake and end up joining the army.

The second part of the short has them meeting their Drill instructor-sergeant Hugh Dare aka the irate husband/man on the street. The Stooges do the traditional military drill comic routines including bayonet practice with gusto and irritate the sergeant even more.

The last part of the short has the Stooges going to war against a fictional country and becoming casualties of a laughing gas shell that explodes on them, rather than the enemy, due to their pointing the cannon upward. They and their sergeant are captured by an anonymous enemy in European type uniforms who appear to speak pig latin. Hopped up by the gas, the Stooges gleefully use their violence in a wild free for all fight against their captors — including an accidental sword thrust to the rear of the sergeant and his retaliatory punch to the enemy captain that makes him fall on the pointed end of his pickelhaube helmet.

The Stooges knock out everyone, including all the enemy soldiers and their sergeant. After emerging victorious, several guns fire at them, with shells whizzing past, the Stooges always ducking in laughter or leaning back giggling, each time missing another shell. Finally, the last shot's shell passes between their legs and takes them into the clouds.

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