Flagpole Jitters (1956)
Article 5828 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-9-2020
Directed by Jules White
Featuring Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard
Country: USA
What it is: Recycled Stooges

The Three Stooges try to raise money to help a crippled friend walk again, and towards that end, they come under the employ of a hypnotist who is secretly behind a bank robbery scheme.

As I watched this late-period Stooges short, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that what I was watching was recycled Stooges; the comic bits feel like tired retreads of earlier Stooges bits, only not as well timed. Still, one reason it feels recycled is because it is; it’s a remake of HOKUS POKUS, and it in fact uses footage from the earlier short. You’d probably have to go through both shorts piece by piece to figure out what’s new and what’s recycled, but I know that the Stooges look noticeably old in some of the scenes here, and that’s probably a clue that the scene is new footage. This is one of the last Stooges shorts to feature Shemp, who had in fact died the year previously to this one’s release.