THAT the 3 Stooges Series of 2 Reel Comedy Shorts ran for a record 24 years is surely a tribute to their connecting with the public via their silly, knockabout slapstick humor as well as to the skill and frugality of production as practiced by Jules White's Columbia Short Subject unit. The shorts were seldom considered to be any sort of serious attempt at film and weren't ever intended to be so; being designed as a sort of added treat to the Theatre's Program.
I've read many, many bad things about this short, and not much of anything good, so I started watching it expecting something really horrible. But it was better than I expected it to be -- not great, but not terrible either.
HOOFS AND GOOFS (1957) is, unfortunatly, not one of the greatest shorts ever. It only proves that Joe Besser would never qualify as a good stooge.
A terrible premise for a "comedy" two reeler: the Stooges sister has recently died. Not even "black humor" here as in the ending of "Laughing Gravy" when Laurel & Hardy's landlord takes a gun and claims that "this is more than I can stand", goes off camera and we hear a gun blast and L&H remove their bowlers and with bowed heads return to their room.
Directed by Jules White, "Hoofs and Goofs" was the first of sixteen Three Stooges shorts featuring Joe Besser as the third Stooge, and although many Stooge fans do not think very highly of Besser (my girlfriend chooses to call him "Whiny Joe"), I personally like him very much. "Hoofs and Goofs" is a pretty decent Stooge film concerning reincarnation: The Stooges' sister Birdie, after having been deceased for a year, has been reincarnated as a talking horse (played by Tony the Wonder Horse).
Though I may seem to be in the minority, I do like some of Joe Besser's shorts.This, however, is not one of them.
