IN THE BALCONY is proud to present an EXCLUSIVE interview with Oscar-winner PEGGY STERN, creator or a brilliant new documentary called CHUCK JONES: MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. Click the Martian spaceman for Ms. Stern In The Balcony!

Doggies on Death Row!

If you're looking for racy, exciting, provocative pre-code era films with cutting-edge drama and a cast of dumb animals held up by piano wire, why, have WE got the comedy short for you: The Big Dog House! Plus, this section of Slapstick Sundays offerings includes Slipping Wives and Duck Soup with Laurel & Hardy and The Sex Life of the Polyp with Robert Benchley. Click the photo for all the four-legged fun!

Fiddling while Culver City Burns!

And still more past farcical fun; we keep them posted with Slapsticky Notes (atssa some joke, eh, boss?) In this section, you'll find Fiddlesticks with Harry Langdon, Limousine Love with Charley Chase, and Laurel & Hardy in The Lucky Dog and 45 Minutes from Hollywood. PLUS: Click on that big fiddle over there and to learn how YOU out there in Internetland can help preserve American Slapstick classics.

Oh, c'mon... EVERYBODY loves the Little Rascals! Genius Products has released a beautiful set of Little Rascals films in chronological order from their first sound film, Small Talk (1929) through Hide and Shriek, their final Hal Roach-produced film in 1938. That's 80 Little Rascals comedies, plus a wealth of bonus material in this DVD release.

For an overview of the Our Gang/Little Rascals series, click on that DVD cover over there. G'head, Butch 'n' Woim won't hurt ya!

Retour de Flamme is a series of French DVDs produced by Serge Bromberg and Lobster Films that preserve our cinematic treasures by restoring and remastering rare short subjects of the past to "save them from the flames". In Europe, six DVDs offering a total of more than 12 hours worth of fascinating films are available, and here in the U.S., Flicker Alley has a boxed set with many of these films.

In The Balcony, we've got all of the various releases, and will spotlight them on an ongoing basis here in our Short Subject Department.

This month, we've got Laurel & Hardy, nude women on the streets of Paris, fun in the surf at Coney Island, Nazi puppets, and the first episode of a sensational serial, The Flight Around the World. Click on the DVD cover at left to revisit those thrilling days of yesteryear...

Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard went to work for Columbia Pictures in the spring of 1934, and the Three Stooges became fixtures around the lot for the next quarter-century, producing easily the most popular series of short subjects of their era...

Unfortunately, for years Columbia's DVD releases of the Stooges were, to be kind, a mixed bag at best. Now, Sony is finally committed to doing right by "The Boys" with chronological sets of Three Stooges 2-reelers. The first four volumes are available now, and cover Columbia releases of Stooges shorts in the calendar years 1934 through 1945, dozens of slapstick 2-reelers, beautifully restored and remastered. You can read our "lost liner notes" that didn't get included with the first set by clicking on either DVD cover. Meanwhile, the Stooges series ran until the late 1950s, so there are plenty more volumes to come, folks!

In The Balcony is also proud to present a look at the best USA release of a restored, remastered MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS starring Laurel & Hardy -- at last, the film gets an edition that's worthy of it!

Give Mother a Goose and you can... that is, click on Mother Goose on your left and go to LAUREL & HARDY'S FUN HOUSE for all the thrilling news!

Hey, want more Columbia Fun!?! SURE you do! Click HERE to read about the comedy team of Gus Schilling & Dick Lane, and click HERE to read our review of the earlier Three Stooges DVDS!

VCI Entertainment's partnership with Kit Parker films has been a goldmine for fans of obscure noir and sci-fi oldies, and now they turn their attention to rescuing a wealth of silent films from the Weiss Brothers, starring both well-known and obscure slapstick comics, plus a few surprises -- and all in gorgeous prints from beautiful 35mm masters.

For our In The Balcony review of this 2-disc set, click the DVD cover on the right! 

KRAZY KAT and IGNATZ MOUSE! For some of us, those names mean nothing. For most of us, though, we recall either the chintzy TV series of the early 1960s, or maybe if we're old enough the "lost" Paramount cartoons of the 1930s or the silent 'toons of the 1920s. If we're lucky, we're familiar with the great comic strip by George Harriman, too, one of the most unusual and interesting of all classic comic strips. Harriman created a series of short-lived, unsuccessful comic strips, including The Dingbat Family. The Dingbats had problems with a goofy, asexual cat and a feisty mouse, though, and by 1913 the pair had been spun off into their own series, which lasted until Harriman's death in 1944.

The fine folks at Inkwell Images (inkwellimagesink.com) offer a terrific DVD called Krazy Kat Kartoon Klassics, featuring an in-depth, fascinating bio of cartoonist Herriman, the first popular black cartoonist, and a review of all the Krazy Kat animated antics. The disc includes such hard-to-find cartoons as Krazy Kat Goes a Wooing (1916), The Great Cheese Robbery (1920), and many more. "A great package, well done" says cartoon historian Jerry Beck, and we agree with him 100%.

We advise each and every one of you to hustle over to Inkwell Images at this LINK and purchase your own copy.