Three Stooges Trilogy at Wal-Mart (1 Viewer)

[Mark Y]

A friend alerted me to this. There is a DVD collection called The Three Stooges Trilogy, including the later feature films The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, The Outlaws Is Coming and The Three Stooges In Orbit. From what I can tell, it's in selected Wal-Mart stores -- don't know if it's available elsewhere. (When I heard this, I was hopeful for a moment that there would be a second volume with Have Rocket Will Travel, Stop! Look! And Laugh! and The Three Stooges Go Around The World In A Daze, but read on.) It's in what looks like a single amray case with a cardboard sleeve over it. Now, I also saw a few other packages at Sam's Club, also called The Three Stooges Trilogy, which were just repackagings of older shorts collections with a cover wrapped around them. But this one with the feature films intrigued me, especially since I hadn't yet gotten around to picking up any of these three titles and it was going for around $15, so I figured I can't go wrong. Yes and no. This is simply a repackaging/remaindering of old stock, and what they've done is just stacked the three DVDs (which are old stock of the previous releases of these three titles) one on top of the other. So I guess it's a bargain, but I probably will put them in a different case made to accomodate three discs without stacking them on top of one another.

The outer sleeve has the same artwork as the case itself, but it appears the sleeve was proofread, while the case wasn't. For The Outlaws Is Coming, the description says: "The Stooges crash through the time barrier in this muscle-headed feature film." (This is a verbatim repeat of the synopsis for The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, which is printed directly above this.) Then it says "Starring: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard and Curly Howard." There is no mention of the short Goofs And Saddles appearing as an extra, but it's there. One other goof is that Hercules and Orbit are both listed as 1:85:1 anamorphic widescreen, but Outlaws is listed as 1:33:1 fullscreen. They are all cropped widescreen. (Let's not get into that debate again, but since these were all filmed "protected for widescreen," I really would rather have had the full frame image, as they've always had when shown on television, but that's another subject altogether.)

I also picked up the fourth volume of shorts and the guy who checked me out (probably in his 20s) said he liked the Stooges, but was looking forward to the ones with Shemp!

 

[CameronMcC]

whats the upc code on the back of the box

 

[Dick]

So, where the f#*k is HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL?

 

[David Deeb]

Sony seems to be having great success with the new "Three Stooges Collection". Up to Volume 4 now & very popular.

Yet they keep repackaging the previous DVDs (which Stooge fans hated - poor transfers, random order, terrible menus, etc).

Stooge enthusiasts know the difference, but it seems like this has got to be confusing to the average customer. Do they want them to get burned too & not buy the new "Three Stooges Collection"?

A local FYE store has literally 3 dozen of the old series out in front, yet had completely sold out of the new series when I stopped by to get a copy of Volume 4. Why?

 

[J Hall]

...and I just found multiple copies of "Curly Classics" at Big Lots for $3 a pop.

 

[ahollis]

This could be one of two things.

1. Sony is dumping the inventory out to make way for newer releases of the features when the Complete Collection of the shorts is finished. Hopefully that will be when “Have Rocket Will Travel” is released. (This one I want as badly as the film is).

2.The success of the Complete Collection of shorts so far has wetted Wal Mart’s appetite for Stooges. I have not seen any of the shorts collection volumes in any of their stores, so the price point might be too high for them since this is a classic and not brand new family or horror. Wal Mart did ask Lionsgate? at one time for a collection of Laurel & Hardy because of customers asking for it. That is the reason we got those awful transfers of “Music Box” and “Way Out West.” It seems Wal Mart is trying to jump on the band wagon without actually getting on. Take the old inventory, re-package and sell them to unsuspected customers. As they always do with everything.

Since the packaging is so wrong at so many places, it sure does sound like a quick job to me.