"Front!"
Idle Roomers is the 80th short film starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges, released on July 15, 1944. In it, the stooges are working as bellhops in a large hotel. When an attractive woman (the lovely Christine McIntyre, in her debut appearance with the team) checks in the trio compete for her affections. Unfortunately, her husband (Vernon Dent) who happens to excel in knife throwing, is not amused by their entics. The husband is also secretly importing Lupe the Wolf Man (Duke York) who goes berserk when he hears music. Later on, when Curly is cleaning their room, he turns on the radio, and the wolf man escapes his cage and goes on a rampage. The stooges search the hotel for the monster, who they believe at first to just be a burglar, and have several humorous encounters with him. The stooges head for the elevator back to the lobby which contains the Wolf Man inside who is playing with the elevator switch which cause to crash through the roof and sends the trio and the Wolf Man high into the sky.Tropes:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The stooges try this against the Wolf Man, which fails because Curly locked the door "once this way, once that way".
- Artistic License – Music: According to this short, a trombone sounds like a whole band.
- Berserk Button: Music, for the Wolf Man.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Vernon Dent's character, who starts throwing knives at Curly for flirting with his wife.
- Elevator Failure: The hotel elevator can apparently be controlled by the arrow above the door that indicates which floor its at; and later being tampered with too much causes it to accelerate upwards and burst through the roof.
- Mirror Routine: Happens between Curly and the Wolf Man, which has Curly thinking that he really needs a shave. It ends when he spits into the "mirror" to clean it off and ends up spitting in the Wolf Man's face.
- Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Inverted. The stooges mistakenly believe this trope to be true and Curly plays a trombone for the Wolf Man, only for it to severely backfire.
