‘Creeps’ (1956) was the 168th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. The single day of photography took place on May 16th, 1955. The film was released on Thursday, February 2, 1956 (the 33rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar), 41 days after the death of Shemp Howard. The film is about 75% stock footage lifted from ‘The Ghost Talks’ (1949). Above I’ve posted two videos–one contains the new footage from ‘Creeps’, the other is the complete ‘The Ghost Talks’. The new footage consists of a framing device involving the Stooges telling a bedtime story to their three sons–all of whom are played by the Stooges a la Laurel and Hardy in ‘Brats’ (1930) as well as an extended sequence in the haunted house involving Shemp, a guillotine, a talking stuffed fox and the ghost in the suit of armor skinning the rear end of Moe’s pants. Otherwise that’s it for new footage. The laziness into which the Stooge comedies descended in the final two to three years may well have had to do as much with the age factor as with the ever-cheapening budgets. By now Shemp was sixty years old and the others only slightly younger. I’m almost sixty years old and I can barely watch the Stooges without getting exhausted (much less execute their slapstick routines). Since ‘The Ghost Talks’ is an earlier Shemp entry (and a very good one at that) ‘Creeps’ can be rated higher than it deserves. But since Shemp was gone by the time it was released let’s give it the benefit of the doubt (or something of that sort). The following final Shemp shorts–containing no new footage with Shemp at all (he was dead, after all) and relying on the amusingly pathetic ‘Fake Shemp’ substitute Joe Palma–are too depressing to contemplate.