If a Body Meets a Body (1945)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Jules White

Writers:

Gilbert Pratt (story)
Jack White (screenplay)

Release Date:

30 August 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Short

Plot:

Curly learns that he is named in the will of his rich uncle, so the boys head for the uncle's mansion to attend the reading of the will...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Remake | Reference To Dracula | Slapstick | The Three Stooges

Cast

Curly Howard	...	Curly Q. Link (Q for cuff) (as Curly)
Larry Fine	...	Larry Mink (as Larry)
Moe Howard	...	Moe Pink (as Moe)
Theodore Lorch	...	Jerkington (the butler)
Fred Kelsey	...	Detective
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Joe Palma	...	The housekeeper (uncredited)
Al Thompson	...	The body (Bob O. Link) (uncredited)
Victor Travers	...	Relative (uncredited)
John Tyrrell	...	Dead body (the lawyer) (uncredited)
Dorothy Vernon	...	Relative (uncredited)

Directed by
Jules White

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Gilbert Pratt		story (as Gil Pratt)
Jack White		screenplay

Produced by
Jules White	....	producer

Cinematography by
Benjamin H. Kline		(as Benjamin Kline)

Film Editing by
Charles Hochberg

Art Direction by
Charles Clague

Production Companies

• Columbia Pictures Corporation

Distributors

• Columbia Pictures (1945) (USA) (theatrical)
• Screen Gems Television (1958) (USA) (TV) (syndication)
• Image Entertainment (1991) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (1995) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Image Entertainment (1995) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Sony Video (1997) (USA) (VHS)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (1999) (USA) (DVD)
• Sony Video (2001) (USA) (DVD)
• Columbia TriStar (2002) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (2003) (USA) (DVD)

Runtime:

18 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Australia:G

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

This has a plot identical to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's short The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930). Fred Kelsey even plays a domineering detective in both shorts.

Quotes:

Larry Mink: [about Curly's soup] Smells like a dead horse!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Shivers (1995) (VG)

Very Good Short

This short would've been a classic like the successful from the early 1940's if Curly have'nt suffered his stroke which led to his decline but what Curly couldn't do, Moe and Larry make up for him, although they're were some slow scenes in the haunted house, the highlight comes when Curly and Larry constantly wake up Moe and Moe gets grouchy, I thought that it was hilarious and the parrot in the skull routine is a classic and it was later reused in Ghost Talks and Scotched in Scotland, I thought that this was one of the better shorts during the 1945-46 period even though Curly was showing signs of slowing down and slurring his speech a bit, watch the next short that the boys did (Bird in the Head) and Curly was worse in that short but fortunately the short after that called Micro Phonies Curly pulled off a great performance even though Micro Phonies was released better Bird in the Head.