They Stooge to Conga (1943) User Reviews (15)

Schickelgruber!

[mhettler · 9/10 · 19 January 2005]

I saw this one years ago and one scene has stayed with me. Moe walks into a room, sees a portrait of Hitler, stops in his tracks, and cries, "Schickelgruber!" The body language and intonation convey a perfect combination of surprise, fear, and revulsion, but in the use of the name "Schickelgruber," he simultaneously conveys contempt. Here at the height of World War II, Moe managed in just a second or two with his facial expression, movement, and tone of voice, to perfectly capture the nation's disgust and loathing toward the Nazis and especially their leader, while figuratively sticking his tongue out or thumbing his nose or whatever on our behalf at the same time.

Moe's talent went way beyond the bullying "boss stooge;" here we see his brilliance as a social and political satirist captured in one quick moment.

Not as violent as people make it seem...

[jimtinder · 7/10 · 16 December 2008]

"They Stooge to Conga," The Three Stooges' first release of 1943, has earned the reputation of being the most violent film in their 24-year short subject span. True, the film is violent, sometimes to the extreme; however, the violence is short-lived, the Stooges are not permanently hurt, and the end result is mayhem and mirth of the first order.

A careful comparison of "They Stooge to Conga" with their 1936 film "Half-Shot Shooters" offers proof that "Conga" is not their most violent film. In "Shooters," arms are broken and eardrums are busted. In "Conga," Moe gets his scalp, eye and ear poked with a climbing spike. While cringe-worthy in itself, this violence is not long lasting, allowing the viewer to relax and enjoy the unfolding comedy.

Give "They Stooge to Conga" another chance. Look past the critical analysis that condemn this film's violence and just enjoy it as another Stooges wartime farce. 7 out of 10.

Pretty funny Nazi parody

[rbverhoef · 7/10 · 1 May 2004]

In 'They Stooge to Conga' we see Moe, Larry and Curly as three fixers. They can fix anything. A woman calls for them, she wants her doorbell fixed. The men start working but instead of fixing anything they mess up the entire house. We also learn that the house is actually the secret headquarters for some Nazis.

The stooges think the broken doorbell is a wire problem. After the house is a complete mess, they go outside to see if there is a problem with the wires there. They mess things up again, and a lot of people are not able to make telephone calls. Around this point they discover who they are dealing with.

This is a very funny short, although it is a little slow in the middle. The scenes outside with a climbing spike are a little too graphic, I think. The start with the wires and the ending with Moe impersonating Hitler make up for that. A very nice Three Stooges short.

Funny

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 30 June 2000]

The Three Stooges come back in this short after a 2 year absence from the Natzi parodies. This time though, they don't play dictators, they play fixers. They are hired to fix a doorbell, but un-beknonst to them, the employees are spies. Plenty of laughs, especially the wire sequence in the house. One of the Stooges funniest. Note- look for Lloyd Bridges as a telephone man (one of his first roles). A+

The Stooges at their funniest...and most violent!!!

[Raine-8 · 10/10 · 10 June 2002]

In this short (another the Stooges did that makes blatant fan of Hitler), the Stooges are fix-it men who are assigned to repair the wiring at a mansion which is actually the hideout of a group of Nazis. The Stooges are their usual inept selves particularly when they try to find the trouble by sending Curly to scale a telephone pole resulting in some of the most violent scenes ever filmed by the Stooges (Moe and Larry apply a pipe wrench to Curly's nose and press his nose against a revolving grindstone; Curly accidentally stabs Moe in the scalp, ear, and (gulp!) eye (shudder!); Moe burns Curly's rear with a blow torch; Curly is electrocuted by the wires to the point where they can light up a light bulb by sticking it in his ear). Eventually, though, their ineptness leads to victory on their behalf when they destroy the house, foul up the Nazi's directions over their air radio, and generally render the Nazis incapable. Very funny stuff, if you can stomach the over-the-top violence in this one (the spike in the eye bit repulses almost everyone who watches it). RECOMMENDED

One of the All Time Great Stooge Shorts

[Sargebri · 25 February 2003]

This is one of my favorite Stooge shorts. I especially love it when Moe disguises himself as Hitler and does a flawless imitation of the "little sign painter". The boys showed that they were doing their part for moral in the dark days of World War II.

A must see for Stoogemaniac's.

[ElijahCSkuggs · 9/10 · 2 April 2010]

The most violent Three Stooges episode you say? Count me in, bub! In this episode the trio of troublesome are using a sort of door-to-door, work-for-hire type of racket to get some bread. They luck out at a house, and are supposed to fix the doorbell. Easy enough. Well, luck be true for the gang they've accidentally knocked on the front door of a Nazi Safehouse. Besides making a total mess of the place, hurting one another and poor, Dudley Dickerson, they also catch wind of their Nazi issues. All of this combines for another classic and hilarious Stooges episode.

Even though it's coined the most violent episode, don't be surprised to catch yourself scratching your noggin trying to figure out why it was banned for violence. The episode is, I suppose, a bit more violent, as Curly really gets the woiks here, being electrocuted, lit on fire, and his nose sharpened...but I'm thinking the depiction of the German sub sinking, and the men on board frantic about to die, was deemed the selling point for hitting the red button. But ya never know.

I do have to give a special shout-out to Dudley Dickerson's role in this one. Of course he plays the stereotype black servant, as were the times, but phewy, he was hilarious in this. Those poking eyeballs of his were the perfect ingredients for amazing comedy. And that telephone scene...oh boy, just watch the episode and TRY not to bust a gut!

One of the greatest Three Stooges shorts!

[Movie Nuttball · 10/10 · 22 July 2004]

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

This is one of My favorite Three Stooges shorts. Its very funny. Vernon Dent is very good in this one. The Japanese guy is hilarious! There is a similar Three Stooges short called Listen, Judge with Shemp and its just as funny! Lloyd Bridges is in this! Stanley Brown, Dudley Dickerson, and John Tyrrell are in this one. This is a very funny one!

Mayhem and Madness

[StrictlyConfidential · 7/10 · 4 July 2021]

"They Stooge To Conga" was originally released back in 1943.

Anyway - As the story goes - Handymen Larry, Moe and Curly encounter the axis of evil when they are called on to fix the doorbell of an enemy spy's hideout, where they discover a secret war room.

Schweinehunde!

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 20 December 2017]

"They Stooge to Conga" is an American 18-minute live action short film from 1943, so this one will have its 75th anniversary next year. It is a Three Stooges short film with Curly still on board. The director is Del Lord and he worked with the gang on many occasions. The two writers, including an Oscar nominee, did not. The year already tells us that this is from the days of WWII and the Stooges made several anti-Nazi propaganda films at that point. Here we have one of them that is especially anti-German. I personally must say that I find their non-political stuff better. This one wasn't a failure by any means, but it just went too much over the top at times I guess and you must be / must have been a big American patriot to see real filmmaking class in here. As for the comedy, it is the usual chaotic slapstick approach that made them so famous and I personally am not the greatest fan of said approach. Anyway, if you like their other stuff more than I do, then maybe you will end up liking this one here too. The rating implies that actually many people had a pretty great time watching. I myself feel it was too exaggerated and lacking focus from the story-telling perspective pretty much, too much for me to recommend it. One forced joke follows the next and most aren't too funny. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Rewires the city

[bkoganbing · 13 July 2011]

I guess in addition to every other evil thing that Nazis were, they were also cheap. You get what you pay for and when you hire Moe, Larry, and Curly as day labor you'll pay through the nose and every other body orifice.

In They Stooge To Conga in which the boys never do manage to get to be part of a Conga line, they're hired as itinerant workers to fix a doorbell, by a mysterious looking woman who looks like Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca. Maybe she just hired them because of how stupid they look and hoping looks would not be deceiving. It turns out that this house is a nest of Nazi spies who are guiding a U-boat into a big city east coast harbor to blow it up.

Why these undercover places insist on having all kinds of Nazi paraphernalia around has always been beyond me. I guess if you can't show your true colors in the privacy of your home where can you? It is the right of privacy which is what America's all about and what they're trying to destroy.

Anyway the boys do a marvelous job on the electrical system of the house and the phone wiring as Curly gets to the top of a nearby telephone pole and essentially rewires the city. Best of all is when the boys discover where they are and gain control of the radio operating the submarine. It does all kinds of tricks out in the deep blue sea enabling our bombers to put it to the bottom of same.

Hokey wartime propaganda stuff, but Moe, Larry, and Curly reduce the Nazis to jabbering jackbooted idiots.

Violent

[lzf0 · 15 November 2004]

This short contains the most violent gag in Stooge history. The spike from Curly's shoe goes into Moe's eye! How could Del Lord and Hugh McCollum allow such a gag? This was more in the style of Jules White. I would like to note that these "violent beyond any doubt to be funny" gags are really few and far between in the Three Stooges canon. They did make 190 short subjects for Columbia! The other over the top violent gags I can think of consist of the following: the wire, nose, ear gag in "Pardon My Backfire", the bellows gag in "Corny Casanovas", the Christmas lights down Moe's throat gag in "He Cooked His Goose", and "Half Shot Shooters" almost in its entirety. It must be noted that it was not the Stooges shorts alone that engaged in cruel comic violence. These kind of gags can be found in other Columbia short comedies, especially those directed by Jules White. Lest we forget, Stan Laurel had a cruel, violent streak in his comedy as well.

Ow, that must have hurt!

[slymusic · 14 September 2009]

Directed by Del Lord, "They Stooge to Conga" is arguably the most violent Three Stooges film ever made. Larry, Curly, and Moe are repairmen who wreck the doorbell wiring in someone's house and later bungle the neighborhood telephone wiring before they realize they've stumbled upon a Nazi hideout!

Memorable sequences: This short contains the most graphic piece of Stooge violence involving Curly's climbing spike! (Almost equalling that is the circular wood blade applied to Curly's nose!) Curly and Larry pull Moe through a wall upon searching the house for a live wire. The chef, played by Dudley Dickerson, manages to steal the show with his few scenes; he gets shoved away by Moe, gets splatted with a bowl of batter, reacts to an exploding telephone, and gets a waffle iron stuck on his behind.

Back in 1943, when "They Stooge to Conga" was first released, I'm sure that the excessively violent gags in this film caused theatergoers to cringe (today, those gags would be NOTHING). All I can say is this: It's a good thing all those props the Stooges used to whack each other were fake!

Making Fun of Hitler

[Michael_Elliott · 25 February 2015]

They Stooge to Conga (1943)

*** (out of 4)

Funny short from The Three Stooges has the men working as "fixer uppers" who can fix anything. A woman asks them to fix their doorbell and the boys accept the job not knowing that inside the house are Nazi spies.

THEY STOOGE TO CONGA is a pretty good entry in the long running series as it contains some pretty good laughs and is also a good example of comedy during WWII. Obviously being shot during the war, there are many jokes here aimed at Germany, Japan and especially Hitler. The Hitler jokes are all pretty funny as we get all sorts of gags aimed at the salute to their leader. Another very funny moment happens when Moe pretends to be a portrait of Hitler and gives a salute back to the Germans.

Fans of the Stooges are going to find quite a few jokes here that work including the rather long opening sequence where the boys destroy the house trying to "fix" the door bell. Overall this isn't the greatest episode in the series but it contains enough laughs to make it worth viewing.

CASTING

[PATRICK1962 · 21 January 2021]

The Nazi housekeeper is played by Fern Emmet, not Minerva Urecal.