This was the last Three Stooges film in which Shemp Howard appears. The only catch is that Shemp died almost a year before appearing in this comic short (the footage was lifted from previous Three Stooges films). At least Columbia used one of the trio's funnier shorts, Dunked in the Deep, for most of the scenes. The boys play janitors who work at a newspaper office. They're begging the managing editor to be given a chance to become reporters. He promises to think about it over dinner. The phone rings while he is out and Moe answers -- it's one of the boss's men, giving him a scoop that some important documents have been stolen by foreign spies. It turns out that the spy with the microfilmed documents (Gene Roth) lives next door to the Stooges. He and the boys wind up as stowaways on an ocean liner. There's one apparently new scene in which Moe and Larry steal a fish off a diner's plate. The fish turns out to be fake, but that doesn't stop the two of them, or the spy, from eating it. After some funny moments lifted whole from Dunked in the Deep, the boys discover the microfilm and the spy is knocked out cold.
by Janiss Garza
synopsis
