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Reviews
The World's Greatest Thrills (1933)
"Grisly and shocking"
At the end of a New York Times review of "Hips Hips Hooray," a Wheeler and Woolsey film, the reviewer notes the short film that runs before it.
I haven't seen the film, nor do I know if it exists today, but after reading the line about the film, I was intrigued. I suppose we think this is a modern phenomenon. But here it is, in 1934. This was before the Hays Code.
The review says: "There is also on the surrounding program an unusual short film, "The World's Greatest Thrills," which collects the celebrated newsreels picturing violent death. It is a grisly and shocking symposium." Feb. 24, 1934
Soup to Nuts (1930)
For the thoroughgoing Stooge fan
The film is tedious and clunky. (Howard J. Green, credited as continuity director, should never have worked in film again.) But one single scene redeems everything else (on the DVD, No. 18, Three Charming Boys). Here the film's storyline (thankfully) comes to a complete halt. In a stationary, medium shot filmed in one take, Ted Healy, Moe, Larry and Shemp recreate a vaudeville routine that is as close to seeing the Stooges live on stage as exists anywhere (unless there's still a 100-year-old audience member still alive and kicking somewhere). When Healy calls his Stoooges into the shot, he takes an instinctive step to his right, as he undoubtedly had done night after night on the live stage. The routine is more rehearsed than anything else in the film (for obvious reasons), illustrated best when Healy reads a letter Shemp has written and Shemp mouths the contents of the letter along with Healy. Stooge aficionados will be particularly interested to note that Shemp, not Moe functions as the boss Stooge.