The Three Stooges in Popular Culture - Film

Film

• In the 1981 film Gas, a gas station attendant who is being interviewed by a news reporter does his impression of Curly for the camera.
• In the film Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson's character, Jerry Fletcher, disguises himself in medical scrubs to elude capture. He introduces himself as "Dr. Fine".
• In Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Dracula (played by late Stooge fan Leslie Nielsen) is finally defeated by the eyepoke.
• The Evil Dead film series has a number of Stooge-inspired moments, including the blood flowing in the basement in Evil Dead (an homage to the 1940 short A-Plumbing We Will Go), the hero's fight with his own severed hand in Evil Dead II, and the fight with the skeleton hands and with the little Ashes in Army of Darkness.
• In the 1997 film Flubber, Weebo uses a scene from the Stooges' episode Sing a Song of Six Pants on her screen to make Weber be quiet while she's watching a soap on TV.
• In the Ice Age movies, Sid imitates Curly's "Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk" twice when asleep.
• In the movie version of Inspector Gadget, "Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard" can be heard over the intercom in the hospital.
• The Three Stooges are a minor but recurring element in the Lethal Weapon films. In the first film, when a drug buy goes bad, Mel Gibson's character Riggs does a Curly bit to distract the sellers, pulling his handgun and placing them under arrest. Later in the director's cut version of the film, Riggs is asked by a young prostitute, "What have you got in mind?", to which Riggs tells her "Well, I want you to come home and watch television with me." The prostitute responds, "You serious?", which Riggs replies "Yeah. 'The 3 Stooges' are on in 20 minutes." In the sequel Lethal Weapon 2 Riggs does a version of "inny minny miny mo" where he changes the mo to "Hey Mo" in Curly style and shoots out the bad guys aquarium. Aside from this, there's also a scene in which Riggs flips through a few channels on TV and finds "Three Missing Links" playing (specifically the scene in which Moe dumps the bucket of water down the back of Curly's overalls). In Lethal Weapon 3, Rene Russo's character has The Three Stooges' video game on her computer, plus an extra scene in the director's cut has Riggs watching "Calling All Curs" on TV (specifically the part where Curly literally "calls all curs" and they meet up in the dining hall).
• In Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, Donald gives Pete the eyepoke in the final fight.
• In 1999's The Mummy, Rick O'Connell uses Moe's eye-gouging gag on one of the revenant mummy swordsmen in the chambers underneath the statue of Anubis in Hamunaptra. In the film's sequel, The Mummy Returns, Rick also uses the eye-gouging gag while fighting a mummy in a double-decker bus.
• In the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, when Vincent takes Mia to Lance's house after she overdoses on heroin, Lance is watching The Three Stooges short Brideless Groom and Emil Sitka chants his famous line "Hold hands, you lovebirds."
• In John Badham's movie Short Circuit, Johnny 5, while watching television, sees the original Three Stooges in their first short for Columbia Pictures, Woman Haters, made in 1934 at Stephanie's (Ally Sheedy) house. He later reprograms three of the Nova Robots into a version of the Three Stooges, almost in their likeness. Johnny 5 even does Curly's "nyuk nyuk" laugh once in a while.
• The DVD version of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace has three pit droids squabbling during the podrace; this is meant as homage to the Stooges.
• The 1985 film, Stoogemania tells the story of an obsessed Three Stooges fan, and includes clips of their classic Shorts.
• In the 1981 film Stripes, John Candy impersonates Curly during the mud wrestling match with the bikini-clad and nude women.
• In the movie There's Something About Mary, in an homage to the Stooges, Ben Stiller tries to eye gouge the dog only to be blocked by his paw.
• In the film This Is Spinal Tap, the heavy metal rock band Spinal Tap's replacement drummer is named Joe "Mama" Besser, a reference to Joe Besser's role as a replacement Stooge as well as the insult "Yo mama."
• In the film Grease three of the members of the T-Birds were goofing around with face slaps and eyepokes until Danny (John Travolta) tells them to settle down.
• In the film Three Men and a Baby, when they set up a trap for the drug delalers and two get caught, one of the drug dealers ask the two masked "parents" (Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg), "do you know who we are!?" Tom responded sarcastically "two thirds of The Three Stooges...", making Steve giggle and laugh, while leaving the room.
• In the 1993 halloween film Hocus Pocus Mary Sanderson (Kathy Najimy) tends to bark at people, just like Curly.
• While not a direct homage, the Russian comedians Yuri Nikulin, Georgy Vitsyn and Yevgeny Morgunov starred in several comedy films from 1961 until 1968 -as the famous trio Trus (Coward), Balbes (Fool) & Byvalyj (Experienced)- which had a style somewhat analogous to that of The Three Stooges.