User Reviews

Andy, apparently with his own camera, is out with Kingfish taking pictures because Andy needs to give photos of himself to all of his dozens of girlfriends. They are walking down the street and stop to take the last one on the roll, deciding Andy will take one of Kingfish in front of a jewelry store. As he is about to take it, a man comes out, sort-of pauses almost right in front of Kingfish, then dashes off into a waiting car that speeds off.

For some reason there is a 30-second gap before someone runs out of the jewelry store declaring he's been robbed. Our guys have already walked down the street and so it is the next morning before Kingfish hears about the robbery through the newspaper, including the information about a $1000 reward for the capture of the crook.

He immediately figures that the last photo Andy shot the day before must have included the man who paused near him, and he immediately begins figuring a way to cheat Andy out of his half of the reward. That is, I figure since they were using the camera together it would make sense to split the reward. If not that, since it was Andy's camera-I think, they don't say so specifically-and Andy who took that last photo, the reward should go to Andy.

Now as reprehensible as Kingfish has been in other weak episodes, this one sinks to a new low. For the first time, he actually plots to physically hurt his "friend" so he will be knocked unconscious and then he can steal the roll of film and claim the whole reward. There is a loose part of the ceiling in the lodge room Kingfish normally occupies, and he tries to set it up so that it will fall and hit Andy on the head.

Despite marking the floor with chalk to make sure Andy sits in exactly the right spot, and then Kingfish repeatedly slamming the door to make the ceiling part fall, nothing happens until he gives up and goes to sit in that same chair and then the ceiling falls on his head.

When he comes to, Kingfish sinks even lower. He proclaims that the ceiling was supposed to fall on Andy, and tells him that now he plans to sue Andy for causing him to be injured. He then tells him about the photo and the reward and says he will settle for $500 in his lawsuit, so when they turn in the picture, they'll split the reward.

Then, in a script that could only have been first rejected by the producers of The Three Stooges for being too stupid, the boys proceed to spend an hour or more trying to find a drugstore that will process their film in less than a few days-which is how it normally worked in the early 1950s and through the early 1970s: You took your film to a drugstore, they shipped it out to a developing lab and in 3-5 days you got your pictures back when you returned to the drug store.

I CANNOT believe they didn't just take it to the police station where the police would develop it right away to catch the bad guy. Then they could have both shown themselves to the police, so there could be no mistaking which picture showed the crook-I'll give you a hint: It was the only picture that had a white guy (the crook) in it. Of course, the big question is did they actually have a photo that showed the crook. The man was almost constantly in motion and if he was in the frame right when Andy pushed the button, he might have been still moving and just be a blur. He might have been out of the frame at the time the picture was actually snapped as he didn't pause directly in front of Kingfish, but just to his side.

No, instead of doing the only logical thing, Kingfish spends a lot of money on at least a dozen bottles of chemicals, plus a booklet on how to develop your own film, and they set up shop in the basement of the lodge to develop their own pictures. Only a complete idiot, with a roll of film that might net him $1000 would dream of developing it himself when he has never done so before.

Meanwhile Sapphire has gotten the gossip mill going, and word soon spread to the man who drove the get-away car who goes to his partner and tells him about the guy with the snapshot of him escaping the store. He knows immediately where to go to find him, and when he goes downstairs to find Kingfish and Andy, Kingfish actually recognizes his face.

Given the way he only paused with his back to Kingfish on the street the day before and then rushed off, you'd figure there's no way he'd recognize him at all. Andy then comes out and also knows who it is, holding a gun on his partner. They tell him the roll of film is in that second room and now it's time for the crook to be the idiot. He has them wait in the outer room while he goes in alone to get the film. They shut the door and lock him in while they dash away.

We see the pair on the street and despite everything else they did that was stupid, they topped it all here. They started talking about how they need to get this film developed so they can catch the crook. HELLO! You need to call the police to tell them you've got the crook trapped in a basement!

I stayed with it for reasons I cannot explain. We are treated to some silly scenes of the pair trying to escape the crook-who shot himself out of the basement, I guess-where they bump into him a couple of times, dash off, then hide out in a beauty salon, where they pose as two women, but then give their location away before slipping through again.

In one last bit of meanness, Kingfish lies to Andy about what happened to the film they were running away with and now Andy thinks he lost it while Kingfish decides to stay off the street so the crook won't see him again, and gives the film to Algonquin to take to the police. After hearing how Kingfish is going to cheat Andy out of the whole reward, Algonquin still goes to help Kingfish. It would have made sense to see him collect the whole reward, but we didn't go there. Instead, he gives the film to the police and tells them the last picture shows the robber.

We finish with the police grilling Kingfish, because that last picture didn't actually show the crook, only Kingfish.

This up-and-down series has led me a few times to proclaim the latest to be the dumbest episode ever. Well, that is sure true of this one. I'm into Disc 5 of a 9-disc collection and if I encounter one worse than this, I don't think I'll finish watching.

Twice Kingfish plots to cheat Andy, and once he plots to knock him unconscious to accomplish this goal. He openly admits it to Algonquin. This is all offensive to me. How Andy would continue to pal around with such a horrible person is beyond all belief. But not taking the film to the police right away made no sense, and it certainly was moronic for the guys 'to try to develop it by themselves. I give it a one and hope I can soon forget this sorry episode.