Cactus Makes Perfect

For the Garfield and Friends episode, see Cactus Makes Perfect (Garfield and Friends).
Cactus Makes Perfect
Directed by Del Lord
Produced by Del Lord
Hugh McCollum
Written by Monte Collins
Elwood Ullman
Starring Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Vernon Dent
Eddie Laughton
Monte Collins
Ernie Adams
Cinematography Benjamin H. Kline
Edited by Jerome Thom
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release dates
  • February 26, 1942 (1942-02-26) (U.S.)
Running time
 17:18
Country United States
Language English

Cactus Makes Perfect is the 61st short subject released by Columbia Pictures in 1942 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

The film opens with the Stooges' mother (played by male actor Monte Collins) attempting to wake up her three boys without success. "Get out of bed you lazy loafers!" she screams to no avail. Finally, she yanks a rope that leads from the kitchen to the bed where the trio is sleeping soundly. This causes the bed to spin vertically until they are expelled.

Curly receives a letter from the Inventors' Association, who state that his Gold Collar Button Retriever is "incomprehensible and utterly impractical." Naturally, Curly misinterprets this as a success, and the trio leave their mother's home to make their fortune. In transit, they are swindled into buying a map leading to a lost mine in the Old West. After actually finding a lost mine, the Stooges run afoul of two down-on-their-luck prospectors (Vernon Dent, Ernie Adams) after Curly fires an arrow from his Gold Collar Button Retriever. The two then try to rob the boys out of their dough. Moe and Larry flee to an abandoned hotel where Curly hid the gold in a safe. ("It's safe in the safe".) The miners show up, and they all take refuge in the safe room. The miners drill through the door, which Curly attributes to termites, and throw a stick of dynamite in. After a little back and forth, the stick fizzles out. Believing it to be a dud, the boys burst out laughing and Curly chucks the dynamite, causing it to actually explode.

Production notes

Filmed on August 7-11, 1941,[1] the title Cactus Makes Perfect parodies the proverb "practice makes perfect."[2]

Curly's remark, "I shoot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care: I get my arrows wholesale!"[3] parodies Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Arrow and the Song," which begins, "I shot an arrow into the air/It fell to earth, I knew not where..."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Pauley, Jim (2012). The Three Stooges Hollywood Filming Locations. Solana Beach, California: Santa Monica Press, LLC. p. 66. ISBN 9781595800701.
  2. ↑ Solomon, Jon. (2002) The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion, p. 207; Comedy III Productions, Inc., ISBN 0-9711868-0-4
  3. ↑ http://www.threestooges.net/filmography/episode/61
  4. ↑ http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hwlongfellow/bl-hwl-arrow2.htm

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.