DbcultAccessing Vault...
7.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Half Shot Shooters remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like the Three Stooges, you know exactly what you are getting here. If you hate slapstick, please, for the love of all that is holy, skip this. It is loud, it is dumb, and it is honestly kind of refreshing in how little it cares about making sense.
The whole thing is basically an excuse to watch things get destroyed.
Moe, Larry, and Curly spend most of the runtime trying to avoid their old sergeant. It is a classic setup that feels like it could have been in any number of other shorts from that era, like After Office Hours if that movie had been about 400% more physical violence and way less actual plot.
The pacing is frantic, which is fine, but there is a specific moment where they start messing with a cannon that feels like it goes on forever. You start to wonder if they actually know how to stop the scene or if they just kept rolling until they ran out of film. 🧨
Watching Curly try to act like a soldier is… a choice.
He is basically just Curly in a uniform, which is exactly what you paid for, but the contrast with the actual army setting is just bizarre. There is a bridge that gets blown up that looks so obviously like a tiny model it’s almost charming. I think they blew up the same house three times from different angles just to make sure we got the point.
The sergeant character is the real glue here, acting as the straight man who is constantly one second away from a total nervous breakdown. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Bugs and Books, though with significantly more property damage.
It is not high art. It is not trying to be. It is just three guys causing a massive amount of destruction while wearing hats that are slightly too small for their heads. Sometimes that is all you need on a rainy Tuesday.