‘Even As I.O.U.’ (1942) was the 65th comedy short subject made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Saturday, April 18th through Wednesday, April 22 1942 and was released on Friday, September 18th of that year (the 261st day on the Gregorian calendar). This top-notch Curly entry may be the most surreal of all of their shorts; Curly giving birth to a foal pretty much guarantees that. Even the title fails to make any sense in the best Dada tradition. The opening ‘on-the-lam’ gags are beautifully timed and staged and the whole concept of the Stooges finding an out-of-doors ‘home’ in a lot hidden behind a false-front house filled with furniture (the belongings of a woman who has been dispossessed) is genuinely original and bizarre. Goats and horses play various parts and a little girl (the daughter of said woman) appears in one scene and then vanishes in the follow up. (i doubt this was part of the design–the kid probably got sick and there was no time to reshoot her scene with another kid. Either that or she was a nine-year-old diva and was fired for bad behavior). Del Lord’s direction is at his crispest and most inventive and Moe’s cruelty actually leads to a moment of remorse; after jamming an iron bucket over Curly’s head and then socking it, Curly flies backward and hits the ground. Moe is scared that he killed him and you can sense a moment of actual fear and dread come over him. It doesn’t last long of course. And then there’s the ventriloquist at the race track and the talking horse who tells Curly he once won the Kentucky Derby. I told you it was surreal…