Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961)

Starring: The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and “Curly Joe” Derita), Carol Heiss, Edson Stroll, Patricia Medina, and a small role from Mel Blanc
Grade: F

As a huge fan of the Three Stooges, I was majorly disappointed.

Summary

We are told by storybook narration that in the kingdom of Fortunia, a king (Edgar Barrier) and queen have a daughter named Snow White (Heiss). Shortly after, the queen died. The king remarried, but the new queen is an evil bitch who hates the attention Snow White gets. At the same time, the kingdom of Bravuria has Prince Charming. His destiny is to be with Snow White.

Next, we see a young Snow White ice skating. Eventually, it shifts to when she’s an adult. The Evil Queen (Medina) asks her mirror “Who is the fairest of them all?”. The mirror explains that Snow White is right up there with her, pissing her off. Snow White mingles with citizens of the town on her birthday, and they want to give her gifts. She accepts one from her friend and employee Linda, and she loves it (it’s some sort of fur). Linda asks that in return, she will be allowed to leave and get married to her husband-to-be. Snow White happily agrees and there’s a whole song-and-dance routine with ice skating that follows. After all of this, she is told that her father, the king, is dying. She goes to him as he lays in bed. As he hugs her, the king makes the Evil Queen promise that Snow White will be loved as much as he loves her and that Count Oga (Guy Rolfe) will remain a faithful person. As you would imagine, neither one of these promises were kept. After the king dies, Count Oga and the Queen talk about how they “done away” with Prince Charming discreetly. They had to because if Charming were to marry Snow White, then he would’ve been the king of two kingdoms and the Queen would be out of power, in favor of Snow White. To stop Snow White from ever becoming a queen, the Queen sends her to be jailed in the castle. When she is jailed, a soldier named Rolf talks about how terrible this all is.

Thanks Rolf…

We then see Quatro (Edson Stroll) performing ventriloquism and magic for the Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe). They are all traveling performers/friends and Quatro is just practicing his act for them. They discuss afterwards how much they need Quatro while he acts like he needs them. The Stooges tell Quatro they’ve never explained how they actually found him, intriguing Quatro. They explain that fourteen years ago, they were chased out of town for trying to peddle a fake hair growth product to the public. They were chased to the outskirts where they saw Hordred the Huntsman (Buddy Baer) attack a small boy. This boy ends up being Quatro. The Stooges are able to fight off the man and save the kid, only to find out that he couldn’t remember anything. Quatro explains this is no big deal, and he isn’t going anywhere.

Later, Snow White has been jailed for a year. The Queen wants to throw a celebratory party for herself and asks Count Oga who the people would want to see at her party. He says “Snow White” because the people have been asking where she’s been for the last year. The Queen demands that Oga use his magical “Sword of Power” to block all the memories the people have of Snow White. Oga says that there are only three wishes left for the Sword of Power, and he will only use it as an absolute last option. Plus, the sword can be only used for good deeds. As a response, she demands Oga get Hordred the Huntsman to kill Snow White. She also wants Hordred to bring back her heart as proof. Hordred lies to Snow White and tells her that Linda is sick, and she’s been granted leave to go see her. He takes Snow White out into the forest and tries to kill her, but he can’t do it. He lets her go and tells her to never come back to the kingdom. She takes refuge at the abandoned Seven Dwarves’ house.

A day after, the Three Stooges and Quatro head to Fortunia for a performance, but they decide to stop at the Dwarves’ house to rest and practice. The Stooges are friends with the Dwarves and stay at their place sometimes when the Dwarves are gone. They all go in to meet Snow White, befriend her, and promise to be her bodyguards. They leave her at the house however to go to Fortunia. The Queen finds out from her mirror that Snow White is still alive. As a result, they torture Hordred and find out he let Snow White escape and that the fucking Three Stooges beat his ass fourteen years ago and saved Prince Charming. He even admits they’re the same people that are performing tonight for the kingdom. The Queen and Count Oga send their troops out to go get them.

Just as Prince Charming/Quatro and Snow White start to fall in love, the troops arrest Quatro. Additionally, they set up a manhunt for Snow White and the Stooges. Now, the Stooges have to figure out a way to save Quatro and help Snow White get back in power.

My Thoughts:

First of all, I needed more Stooge. For being promoted as another Three Stooges adventure, there wasn’t nearly enough Stooge action than what I was hoping for. The first funny Stooge bit that happens is forty minutes into the movie and it lasts ten seconds. There was just so much backstory to get to, the writers forgot that the only reason we are watching this is to see Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe in a fantasy film. That’s it. We already know the story of Snow White. Though this is a bit of a different twist on the story, I assure you most of us could not give less of a fuck.

It took an hour into the movie for a pie to be thrown! An hour? That’s crazy!

They wasted too much time trying to convince us that Quatro is so important to the Stooges that they even have the Stooges talk down on themselves consistently. Larry at one point says, “We’re nobodies” and Moe and Curly Joe wholeheartedly agree for some reason. I understand they’re trying to show the audience that in the context of this film, the Stooges are a struggling performing act in medieval times, but it took away the energy of the Stooges’ performance. They weren’t their usual crazy selves. The entire film, you’re waiting for them to go crazy, and it never really happens. They’re one-dimensional losers selling this movie off name value while not actually delivering on the promise of the title. They never get nearly enough screen time to show off their three very different personalities either. Instead of Moe being the dick of the group, all three characters are toned down and are constantly either feeling bad for themselves or others. That overt sweetness is not what we came to see. On top of that, there’s not enough Stooge violence amongst themselves.

The whole thing is childish, sappy, boring, and a little strange.

All the violence comes from these horribly choreographed sword fighting scenes in the second half of the film. Anytime someone is killed by a sword in the climax, the sword barely touches their body, or it looks like it goes by their side. It’s very reminiscent of a hokey stage play. I’ve seen better sword fighting deaths in some YouTube videos! The choreographed fight scenes look like they were put together by the students of a 100-level college class too. The set design and costumes were pretty cool, but this is really the only positive. Well, I take that back. The funniest part about this film was Quatro getting unexpectedly shot in the chest with an arrow and falling fifteen feet to his “supposed” death. However, they match it with the idiocy of the next time we see him. Later, he’s miraculously healed and is trying to convince a bunch of random citizens to start a revolution and overthrow the Queen. Without much hesitation, they listen. What’s odd is that they don’t explain how he was healed. After he looked to be dead, we just see Rolf and some other random guy carry Quatro’s lifeless body away, presumably to this place with the other citizens, but nobody seems to address the fact that he was shot in the chest with a fucking arrow! The easiest way to explain this would be for the Stooges to “wish” him back alive, since Curly Joe was in possession of the Sword of Power, but they waste it on two location jokes that don’t hit as much as they should. That was a clear missed opportunity.

I also didn’t get the point of the Evil Queen waiting until later to kill Snow White. What’s the point of waiting? Why jail her for a year and then decide later to send someone to kill her? Why not just cut out the middleman and do it right after the king died? What’s the point of having her live if her existence by itself bothers the Queen? Also, she tasks Hordred to show “proof” of Snow White’s death by cutting out her heart and giving it to her. Considering that Snow White is jailed in the same castle the Queen is in, why doesn’t she just walk down the hall and watch Hordred kill her herself? She can’t be that busy!

Then again, maybe that would make too much sense…

Then, there was the inclusion of Carol Heiss. She plays a solid Snow White but looks strangely like Michelle Monaghan. On top of that, I found out in real life she used to be an Olympic figure skater. That’s very impressive, but it’s not a good enough reason to change a majority of the scenes in this film to sequences to show off said skills. There was way too much ice skating in this film for my liking. If I would’ve known this beforehand, I would’ve fast forwarded through all of it but. However, if I did this, the movie would only be an hour long. Yeah, there’s that much ice skating. It’s not like the sequences feel like they go by quick either. They feel like FOREVER, dragging the pace of the movie into the ground. At one point, Snow White has a dream sequence that lasts eight minutes or so, and it’s an ice-skating recap of what has just happened or what could happen. Honestly, I don’t even know, and I definitely don’t care! They even have three stand-ins play the Stooges from afar, just so they can act like the Stooges are good ice skaters too. Visually, it was impressive…. if I were watching a Broadway play. For a movie, a Three Stooges movie no less, it was absolute trash. The singing was way too much too. What was the obsession back then with putting comedy stars in musicals? Just because the Marx Brothers pulled it off doesn’t mean everyone should do it.

Snow White and the Three Stooges reminded me a lot of Abbott and Costello’s Jack and the Beanstalk in terms of style. Though Jack and the Beanstalk was far from good, at least they made Abbott and Costello somewhat the focal point. Yeah, they focused on Costello a little more but compared to this film, they did a good job. The only people that would watch this movie are Stooge fans. Because of this, the least you could’ve done, no matter how shitty the final product was, was show the Three Stooges in all their Stooge-ness! Sadly, they barely did that on top of being a horrible movie overall.

What a waste of time this was!