Cactus Makes Perfect on AllMovie

The first part of this Three Stooges comedy is pretty amusing, but it's even funnier if you realize that the actor playing the Stooges' long-suffering mother is writer Monte Collins in drag (he co-wrote the story to this picture). Ma Stooge lives with her boys in a humble farmhouse, but Curly has a plan to make them wealthy -- he has invented a "gold collar button retriever." The Inventors Association sends him a letter calling the contraption "incomprehensible and utterly impractical." With that bit of encouragement, the boys leave their ma, the cow and the chickens, and go to the big city to make their fortune -- the big city happens to be just across the street. Immediately a conman gets a hundred dollars out of them by selling them the rights to a lost mine -- and the map that tells them how to get there. Out in gold country, Curly puts the collar button retriever to use as a gold locator and sure enough, they come upon the lost mine. They also run into a dangerous pair of desert rats who want the mine's gold. Once inside the mine, getting the gold is easy enough -- the Stooges find a lever they can pull like a slot machine. But they still have to get away from the desert rats and they hide in the safe of a closed-down hotel. The rats drill a hole in the safe and push a stick of dynamite through. The Stooges push it back. The rats push it in again and the Stooges are blown through the hotel's wall. One bit of trivia -- this short is on a compilation reel along with Whoops! I'm an Indian and Rockin' Thru the Rockies, and in all of them Curly is wearing the same skunk (not coon) skin cap!