An Ache in Every Stake is the 57th short film released by Columbia Pictures in 1941 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. In it, the Stooges are ice deliverymen that have fallen asleep in their delivery wagon. Their horse wakes them up. Curly finds his face and head embedded in a large block of ice after having used it for a pillow. Moe and Larry break him out of it, and they begin their ice block deliveries. After several deliveries they are called to make a delivery at a house atop a long, high staircase. It's so high that every time they go up, the ice melts to a small cube. They make several attempts including relaying it successfully to the top, only to have Curly drop it. It's during these attempts and arguments that they bump into Mr. Lawrence (Vernon Dent) and ruin his cakes. When the Stooges antics cause the servants at their customer's (Bess Flowers) house to quit, they volunteer to replace them and prepare dinner for her husband's birthday party. Unknown to them, her husband is Mr. Lawrence, whose cakes they had wrecked earlier in the day. They then suffer many mishaps as they don't know the first thing about cooking.
Although different stairs are used, the short takes a lot of inspiration from the Laurel and Hardy short The Music Box.
Tropes
- A Bloody Mess: An angry chef throws his knife at Curly, pinning his hat to the wall behind him. The impact knocks over a bottle of ketchup on a high shelf, causing Curly to assume the worst when he sees himself covered in red liquid.
- Absurdly Long Stairway: The stooges have to deliver ice up a staircase so long it keeps melting by the time they reach the top.
- Bigger on the Inside: The chicken that Curly prepares is somehow able to fit a can of peas (the whole can), half a dozen oysters (with the shells), a loaf of bread, and Curly's arm up to the shoulder when he shoves it all in.
- Black Comedy: When Moe tells Larry to fill a cake with gas to make it look bigger. Larry misinterprets the command, "Take the gas pipe," to mean he himself should suck on the gas pipe. Moe, naturally, gets annoyed and ends his scolding with, "I'll kill you later. Personally."
- Carrying a Cake: Poor Mr. Lawrence, who has his birthday cake ruined twice due to the stooges' negligence, each time landing face first into it. When he gets home and his wife asks him where the cake is, he angrily declares "I'm wearing it!"
- D.I.Y. Disaster: The stooges ruin a chicken by shoving it with foreign objects, and the cake they bake is filled with explosive gas.
- Harmless Freezing: In the beginning, Curly's noggin was stuck in a huge block of ice as he used it for a pillow. After he gets broken out, he is perfectly okay.
- The Ketchup Test: Curly, after getting a knife stabbed through his derby, thinks he's covered in blood; he tastes it, finding it tastes like ketchup, and discovers he just knocked over a bottle of ketchup.
- Lethal Chef: Moe, Larry and Curly sing a song to Mr. Lawrence as they wheel in his cake, the gist being if his stomach hurts later, not to blame them because he knew they baked it when he ate it. It's meant as a joke, but considering they filled it with natural gas, it's more accurate than they think.
- Literal-Minded: This mentality paints how much Moe considers a "dash" of baking powder, and what Curly considers a pinch of salt (he pinches it first before throwing a handful into the chicken).
- No Sympathy: The baker tells Mr. Lawrence to be careful with his cake, but then the Stooges collide with him and knock the cake all over. The baker then gets mad at Mr. Lawrence because he just told him to be careful.
- You Just Ruined the Shot: When the stooges escape at the end of the short by sliding down the staircase, you can see some children running off at the bottom. As the staircase scene was filmed on location, it's believed they were some local children who wandered onto the shoot and got chased off by the film crew.
