''Cactus Makes Perfect '' is a 1942

short subject A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

directed by Del Lord starring American

slapstick Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...

comedy team The Three Stooges ( Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). It is the 61st entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

The film opens with the Stooges' mother (played by male actor Monte Collins) attempting to wake up her three boys without success. "Get out of bed you lazy loafers!" she screams to no avail. Finally, she yanks a rope that leads from the kitchen to the bed where the trio is sleeping soundly. This causes the bed to spin horizontally until they fly off. Curly receives a letter from the Inventors' Association, who state that his Gold Collar Button Retriever is "incomprehensible and utterly impractical." Naturally, Curly misinterprets this as a success, and the trio leave their mother's home to make their fortune. In transit, they are swindled into buying a map leading to a lost mine in the Old West. After actually finding a lost mine, the Stooges run afoul of two down-on-their-luck prospectors ( Vernon Dent, Ernie Adams) after Curly fires an arrow from his Gold Collar Button Retriever. The two then try to rob the boys out of their dough. Moe and Larry flee to an abandoned hotel where Curly hid the gold in a safe. ("It's safe in the safe".) The miners show up, and they all take refuge in the safe room. The miners drill through the door, which Curly attributes to termites, and throw a stick of dynamite in. After a little back and forth, the stick fizzles out. Believing it to be a dud, the boys burst out laughing and Curly chucks the dynamite, causing it to actually explode.

Production notes

Filmed on August 7–11, 1941, the title ''Cactus Makes Perfect'' parodies the proverb "practice makes perfect." Curly's remark, "I shoot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care: I get my arrows wholesale!" parodies Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Arrow and the Song," which begins, "I shot an arrow into the air/It fell to earth, I knew not where..."

References

External links

* * {{The Three Stooges 1942 films The Three Stooges films American black-and-white films Films directed by Del Lord 1940s Western (genre) comedy films Columbia Pictures short films American slapstick comedy films American Western (genre) comedy films 1942 comedy films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films English-language Western (genre) comedy films