Dizzy Pilots | |
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Directed by | Jules White |
Written by | Clyde Bruckman |
Produced by | Jules White |
Starring | Moe Howard Larry Fine Curly Howard Richard Fiske Harry Semels Al Thompson |
Cinematography | Benjamin H. Kline |
Edited by | Charles Hochberg |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date | September 24, 1943U.S.) | (
Running time | 16' 45" |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Dizzy Pilots is the 74th short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.
The Stooges are the Wrong brothers (a parody of the Wright brothers), a trio of aviators who are drafted into the army, but end up getting a 30-day deferment of duty on account of their claims that the plane they are inventing, the “Buzzard”, will revolutionize flying. The boys get to work, but a series of mishaps cause them to get sidetracked; Moe twice gets knocked into a tub of rubber cement. The first time it happens, Larry and Curly try to get the rubber off Moe by expanding the rubber with hydrogen. Unfortunately, Moe floats to the top of the airplane hangar and into the sky, and Larry and Curly take aim with a shotgun and blast him to safety, resulting in Moe falling down a nearby well.
Later, just as the boys are ready to test the Buzzard, they realize the plane is too wide to move out of the hangar. This problem is solved when the Stooges saw a larger opening in the airplane's hangar. Eventually, they begin a test flight for the plane for a pair of army higher-ups, but things begin to go awry and the flight ends badly, resulting in the boys falling right back into the well and into the army.
During basic training, the Stooges run afoul with their drill sergeant (Richard Fiske), disrupting marching and weapons handling drills.
Dizzy Pilots was filmed on April 6-9, 1943.[1] The army segment is stock footage from 1940's Boobs in Arms.
The gag of a plane being too large to take out of a hangar was reused in 1972 on The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode featuring the Stooges as guest stars ("The Ghost of the Red Baron").