| Spooks! | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jules White |
| Produced by | Jules White |
| Written by | Felix Adler |
| Starring | Moe Howard Larry Fine Shemp Howard Philip Van Zandt Tom Kennedy Norma Randall Frank Mitchell |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 20, 1953 |
| Running time | 15' 44" |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Spooks! is the 148th short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. It is notable as the first Three Stooges short filmed in 3-D. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.
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The Stooges are private detectives that are hired to track down a kidnapped girl name Mary Bopper (Norma Randall), daughter of George B. Bopper. They decide to trace Bopper back to where she was last seen, which leads them to mad scientist Dr. Jeckyl (Philip Van Zandt) and his assistant, Mr. Hyde (Tom Kennedy). There is also a gorilla kept imprisoned in the house for experimental purposes. The Stooges arrive to rescue the kidnapped girl disguised as door-to door pie salesmen.
Spooks! was the first of two shorts (the other being Pardon My Backfire) made by Columbia with the Stooges in 3-D, after the 3-D craze of 1953 began with Bwana Devil. It originally premiered on May 20, 1953 with the Columbia western Fort Ti (also in 3-D).
Both the Columbia 3-D Edmund O'Brien thriller Man in the Dark and Spooks! were originally sepia toned in order to allow for more light to pass through the Polaroid filters necessary for the dual-strip 3-D projection method of that time. The process did not work as expected and the idea was dropped after these two productions.
This is also the first short in the series filmed for flat wide-screen. Although some films of this period were composed for the Academy aspect ratio and released in wide-screen during the confusion, Spooks! and further shorts from then on were composed at 1.85:1, Columbia's house ratio.