I’ll Never Heil Again (1941)

Starring: The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly)
Grade: Classic

I’ll Never Heil Again is arguably the Three Stooges at their finest.

Summary

“The characters in this picture are all fictitious. Anyone resembling them is better off dead.”

At the home of deposed King Herman the 6 ⁷⁄₈ (Don Brodie), a sign is seen declaring “Moronica uber alles”. To announce his exit from the house, Herman is played out by a trumpeter. The Trumpeter suggests Herman take off his cape. So, Herman first takes off a white fur pelt of a dog. It turns out that the dog is still alive and runs off right after Herman puts the dog on the ground. He gives his actual cape to the trumpeter. As he begins to cut some wood, his daughter Gilda (Mary Ainslee) comes out to greet him. Behind her is Mr. Ixnay (Vernon Dent), Mr. Amscray (Lynton Brent), and Mr. Umpchay (Bud Jamison). After hugging Gilda, Herman asks what she’s doing with the traitors who overthrew him to put in dictator Moe Hailstone (Moe). Ixnay admits they made a mistake and they want to help Herman regain the throne. Amscray then talks about the plan to have Gilda spy on Hailstone, so they can destroy him. Herman notes how they already betrayed him once. How can he believe them now? Ixnay challenges them to be struck where they stand if they aren’t shooting straight with him. Just as he finishes saying this, Herman chops a piece of wood that goes flying into the air. It smacks Ixnay, Amscray, and Umpchay on the head. Looking up at the sky, Ixnay questions if He can take a joke.

At the palace, the Hitler stache-sporting Hailstone shaves and questions his worker what is keeping Field Marshall Curly Herring (Curly) and Minister of Propaganda Larry Pebble (Larry). In a different room, Herring and Pebble are playing cards. Hailstone calls Herring on his office phone and demands they come over right away, but Herring replies that he will come over when he’s ready. An angry Hailstone splashes his brush full of shaving cream onto the phone, and it pops out on Herring’s end to splash him in the face. Herring angrily tells Pebble that Hailstone is shaving, and he will be right over. Following this, Herring and Pebble show up. They both move towards Hailstone’s direction into the room, but they march in circles right next to each other to get there. Pebble wants to report something about the people, but Hailstone cuts him off right away because he’s not interested in the people and slaps Pebble with his shaving cream brush. For some reason, Pebble likes the tase of it and reaches for more, but Hailstone pulls him away by the hair and throws him to the side. Moving on, Hailstone asks Herring how the war is going, but Herring doesn’t know. The censors won’t tell him, and he hasn’t read a newspaper. Hailstone tells him to teletype. Herring almost punches him from behind, but Hailstone turns towards him and makes Herring flinch (“Hail”). As Herring goes to the teletype, Hailstone asks what happened in the air. Herring relays that they have bombed 56 hospitals, 85 schools, 42 kindergartens, four cemeteries, and other vital military objects with their bombers. Hailstone couldn’t be happier about the Blitzkrieg. As he brings his arms together in excitement, he accidentally splashes his own face with the shaving cream brush. Herring and Pebble laugh but stop once they see Hailstone getting mad. Looking back at the teletype, Herring announces that Hailstone’s army is on the march again. This morning, they took Paregoric. Hailstone is happy to hear it.

Then, he removes his Hitler stache to shave his upper lip before putting it back on.

Herring says they took Panaca with 650 points before correcting himself to say prisoners, adding that there were also 84 tanks, “Brooklyn 7, New York 3. It’s Sea Biscuit in the lead…”. The teletype gets mixed in with a horse race and Herring reads it as if it’s happening live. As he screams “Kayak wins!”, Hailstone hits him on the nose. He wants to know about his armies and questions if they have taken the dykes of Holland. Herring confirms and says they have taken the Van Dykes of Amsterdam, the Updykes of Rotterdam, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Just as Hailstone is about to hit Herring again, Herring outstretches his hand to “Hail”. Hailstone follows with his own but puts his hand lower than Herring as if it’s the correct way to do it. They go back and forth until Pebble comments “Heil”. Hailstone yells at Pebble to say “Hail”, making Pebble realize he was saying it wrong this whole time. Hailstone starts yelling in German gibberish and Pebble chimes in as well, leading to Herring to look directly at the camera to tell the viewer, “They’re nuts!”. Hailstone hits Herring in the stomach and grabs him by the nose. Then, he grabs Pebble by the nose as well and rushes them away. Sometime later, the three look at the map of Starvania. It consists of countries such as Jug O’Salvia, the Isle of Cork, Jerkola, Slap-Happia, the Great Mitten, I-Ran, He-Ran, She-Ran, They-Ran, and Also-Ran, and plenty of other countries. Hailstone points to the map and brings up how they have captured all of Starvania. Since they have done so, they must take Great Mitten next. Pebble points out how Hailstone said he was going to Blitzkrieg the island of Great Mitten by the middle of August. Herring chimes in to say Hailstone also said it would be in “Septober” and then “Octember”. It’s now in the middle of “Novander” and they still aren’t there yet. Hailstone responds with an accent, “Well, no wonder. I didn’t say what year!”. Pebble doesn’t get it because it’s only 20 miles out. Herring agrees and says he could even skip it.

Hailstone invites him to skip it and threatens to hit him with his pointing stick until Herring distracts him with his hand movements. The maid comes in and announces that lunch is served. Herring asks her if he’s told her the “6 delicious favors” and laughs. As he looks away to make sure the other two are gone, Hailstone takes the place of the maid and faces Herring when Herring turns back to continue talking. Herring panics, tries to run away, and runs straight into a wall. Hailstone dances him to the table for food, and they bow to each other. Hailstone sees his opportunity and hits him on the head. The trio sit down, and Hailstone says their first move is to kick the stuffing out of the turkey (Turkey). Pebble offers to wipe out grease (Greece), but Herring stops him because Chizzilini (Cy Schindell) tried it and “Look what happened”. Hailstone quiets Herring and slaps him with a celery stalk. Herring and Pebble both want a piece of turkey, and Herring is particularly adamant. Hailstone rips off the leg of the turkey and hits Herring with it. Hailstone goes on with his German gibberish, and they all reply back with “Yah!”, but Herring still wants a piece of turkey. He grabs the entire bird off the table and runs to the other side of the room, prompting Hailstone to run after him. Herring throws it to Pebble, so Hailstone runs over to him. Pebble tries to throw it back to Herring but throws it too high. It goes to the picture frame of Napolean Bonaparte. Napolean comes alive in the painting, catches it, and runs away. Hailstone starts crying. Back at Herman’s home, Umpchay reminds Herman about the strategy they have in place. If they can get the Axis Partners fighting amongst themselves, the battle is half won. Gilda tells Umchay to not worry. She is confident that when she is done giving Hailstone an astrology session, he “won’t know which end his axis is standing on”. Amscray then brings up the contingency plan in case hers fails. He gives her the striped 13 ball to put on the pool table. It contains enough high explosives to blow up Hailstone and his henchmen.

Gilda takes the ball, but she assures Amscray she will not fail.

Back at the palace, the trio play pool, but they all go at the same time. Hailstone angrily reminds them that this is a pool game, not a Blitzkrieg. He states that he will invade them. With this, he uses his pool stick to pull both of their noses upwards. They are interrupted by Gilda who announces herself as Hailstone’s new astrologer, the “Cirus of Robach”. Pebble asks if her father was the “Sir of Robach”, but she says she was raised by Montgomery. Herring jokes that it was Montgomery’s Ward. Hailstone bypasses this to tell Gilda that she must get him in touch with the stars. Pebble adds himself into the mix and comments “I’ll take Lamar”. Herring wants “LaMore”, and Hailstone will take “Lasagna with six lessons”. With this, Hailstone slow dances with Gilda while Herring dances with Pebble. It only lasts seconds until Herring bumps Pebble with his stomach, which sends him into Hailstone. Hailstone tells them to spread out and to bring him his telescope. Later, Herring is clearing out the telescope like it’s a cannon, and the stick he uses to do so goes through to the other side to hit Pebble in the face accidentally. At the same time, Hailstone asks Gilda what news the planets portend today. Gilda replies that it’s bad. She feels his Axis Partners are planning something treacherous and invites them all to look for themselves. They look through the telescope and see themselves being turned on a spit in Hell and burned alive. Hailstone realizes that the Axis Partners want to roast them, so he tells Herring and Pebble to summon them for a conference immediately (“Heel!”).

The seeds have been planted, and Hailstone, Herring, and Pebble look to have already fallen into the trap.

My Thoughts:

Even though You Nazty Spy! is a classic in its own right, I’ll Never Heil Again is the superior of the Moronica-centered shorts. Tighter, funnier, and a better handle on its golden premise, I’ll Never Heil Again is up there with the best Three Stooges shorts ever made.

In probably the first time in recorded history, the war profiteers who own a country oust its king, replace him with a dictator, decided they made a mistake, and put together a plan to put the king back in charge. That is how the spiritual successor to You Natzy Spy! begins. We say this instead of calling I’ll Never Heil Again a direct sequel for a lot of reasons, despite retaining some of the main elements. First of all, its predecessor ended with Herman, his daughter Mattie Herring, and all the citizens of Moronica charging the palace, leading to Moe Hailstone, Curly Gallstone, and Larry Pebble to escape to where they hold the lions. After this, they are eaten alive. In this short, they are still alive, but Curly Gallstone is now Curly Herring for whatever reason. Second of all, brunette Mattie was Herman’s daughter. Here however, Herman’s daughter is the blonde Gilda, and no one mentions Mattie’s existence or previous attempt to kill Moe Hailstone. Her role in this sequel is simply just attempted again, only instead of using a magical 8Ball to determine Hailstone’s future, she claims to be an astrologer and has him look into a telescope to see the foreshadowing of what’s to come. As mentioned in the review of You Natzy Spy!, Mattie Herring was the better character, but the role Herman’s daughter played in the narrative is done better here with Gilda. Seeing the Three Stooges roasted on a spit in Hell was a great visual and Gilda having to use the back-up plan with the “13” ball was cool because it gave her something more to do while also adding a layer of suspense, as the viewer isn’t sure when the small bomb will come into play as there is an excellent teasing of its use to comedic effect throughout. The sight gags of Moe, Larry, and Curly all missing knocking it in and getting agitated at the ball and each other was very amusing. Of course, it all leads to Curly getting his first of two shots to the top of the head from a sphere of some sort being smashed on him. The second time is with the globe.

For the most part, I’ll Never Heil Again is even better than the first in utilizing the premise of the Three Stooges running a country into the ground. With Moe Howard still being one of the greatest imitators of Adolph Hitler to this day, he perfectly lampoons his outrageousness as a person, his tyrannical style, and how his ego gets the best of him at every turn like how he argues with Herring and Pebble over pool and goes again to try and knock the last ball in. He even claims he gets a free shot after refusing the fact that he scratched, but who’s going to tell Moe Hailstone no? In addition, he’s hilarious in his outbursts like when he misses again and Herring tells him he used too much English, prompting Hailstone to yell back to never speak such a word in their house. Along with his use of German gibberish just as he did before which is never not funny, there’s also a funny moment where Hailstone knocks off Herring’s hat with the pool stick, and Herring tells him, “Just for that, I won’t go to your party at Belcher’s Garden!”. It’s a great foreshadowing of the divide between Hailstone and Herring that leads to the explosive conclusion of the short. As was the case with You Nazty Spy!, the only thing that stood out was the map scene again, as there was a little over 40 seconds of dead space for the viewer to observe the map and all the creative country names the writers came up with. It doesn’t matter though. They make up for it with Herring making fun of Hermann Göring by admitting that he got all of his medals at a hop shop, so they don’t belong to Hailstone when he threatens to take them away, and Herring ripping off Hailstone’s mustache, prompting Hailstone to yell back at him “Give me my personality!”.

That’s a line I’m going to use in the future. You can bank on that.

The third act is an all-time favorite and legendary moment in comedy history, as Hailstone has the Axis Partners consisting of Chizzilini, the Bey of Rum, and the Russian and Japanese delegates for a meeting (“I’ll show those Axis Partners a thing or two or three or four”). After the Bey of Rum arrives late and gifts Herring his waterpipe, who struggles in trying to figure it out (“It’s alive”), Hailstone in Hitler-like fashion passes out his manifesto for everyone to read. He points out clause 2 for Herring to read and they go back and forth on this submarine/trolley car routine where the reference is lost on me, but it’s highly memorable. While everyone goes over it and Herring accidentally breathes in the gas pipe right next to the water pipe, lights a match for his cigarette after he gives up on the pipe, breathes out, blows fire, and burns half of the Bey of Rum’s beard off, the mood changes as expected. The Bey of Rum wants to complain, so Hailstone hits him with the gavel. With this, Hailstone officially begins the meeting and declares that he’s the winner and the world belongs to him. Both the Japanese delegate and the Bey of Rum argue how it’s unjust and against the international laws, but Hailstone declares the world belongs to him like a true dictator and grabs the globe. In the iconic sequence, everyone in the room treats this action as if the globe is the actual planet and whoever has it owns planet Earth. They chase each other around the table, the Stooges throw it back and forth to avoid the Axis Partners, and they even get into separate huddles to discuss strategies and then get on the line of scrimmage like it’s a football game. Then, in a genius gag of misdirection humor, they face off but go side to side while they walk, and they dance on beat to the music until Herring throws the globe over to Hailstone. The four Axis Partners pick up Hailstone, so he throws it back to Pebble and Pebble has Herring block for him, which leads to Herring ramming the delegate in the chest head-first who then flops up in a headstand against the wall because he’s hit so hard.

It’s hysterical what this 4-on-3 tag match turns into, and they don’t miss any opportunity to throw in other wacky antics in-between blows like the Japanese delegate stopping Hailstone, Chizzilini, and Rum for a picture, and they all do their different hand gestures to save face before going back to fighting Hailstone once the picture is over. Along with Pebble tricking the Japanese delegate by putting the metal sheet under his shirt right before he attempts a headbutt on Pebble and Herring meeting his match in Rum, so he just sidesteps him, which leads to Rum flying through the window on a missed spear, all of it culminates in the feather in the cap of Hailstone convincing Chizzilini to join him only to immediately throw him to the ground (“That shows you can’t trust me!”). In the finish, the fight extends to the Stooges themselves because Herring refuses to give Hailstone his “world” back. In a laugh-out-loud moment, Hailstone takes it and smashes it over his head after demanding it back. The same could be said of Hailstone playing it as serious as can be as he yells at Herring as if it’s his fault saying, “You shattered my world!”. The final minute of the Stooges blowing themselves up out of idiocy and becoming taxidermied heads in an expert takedown of the real-life evil leaders overseas is probably one of the best endings of any Three Stooges short ever.

King Herman, you may have won this round, but as an ethnic Moronican, we will chant “Hail, Hail, Hailstone, Wa-HOO!” until the end of time.

I’ll Never Heil Again is a fantastic satirical take on World War II, it does a better job than its predecessor at maximizing its premise and makes it feel like the larger scale story it always had the potential of being, and gives the fans of the Three Stooges a litany of iconic moments that will live forever in our consciousness.