ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Even non-Stooge fans will be mildly amused by this modest little sci-fi comedy — which, along with TV reruns of their feature shorts, resurrected the careers of the famous trio just when it seemed they would be put out to pasture.

Big budget science fiction films were out of fashion by 1959, so Columbia Pictures didn't invest much in this one about three knuckleheads who accidentally rocket themselves to Venus. Abbott & Costello had already done it 1953, even though the title of their film claims they go to Mars.

The Stoogemania version of Venus may lack the gorgeous women which Abbott & Costello's trip gave us, but it does have a talking unicorn, a surrealistic "future car", a giant fire-breathing tarantula, and three evil Venusian Stooge look-a-likes who follow the boys back to Earth. Directed by David Lowell Rich.

Comedy science fiction was an active sub-genre during the late 1950s/early 1960s. In addition to "Have Rocket, Will Travel", there was "The 30-Foot Bride from Candy Rock", "The Absent Minded Professor", "Visit to a Small Planet", "The Son of Flubber", "Invasion of the Star Creatures", "The Three Stooges in Orbit", and several others.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]

This will be available on Blu-ray in a triple feature to be released in May.

[Bud Brewster]

DVDs and BDs continue to rescue movies and TV series that might otherwise suffer the fate of less fortunate productions like Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

If they ever discover good prints of that show and release them on Blu-ray, I'll do my "happy dance" all over the house!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Just watched a trailer on Youtube for The Three Stooges In Orbit. They have a segment of it where the stooges are all seated at a desk & speaking to the camera. In the background are some of the machines from FP.

This film was fun to see because the sun was setting on movie comedy teams by '59.

I believe Oliver Hardy had passed away by then, if not, he & Stan were certainly retired. Lou Costello died in 1959, he & Bud had split up several years earlier. Chico Marx was gone & the Marx Brothers (my fav comedy team) had not done a film together since Love Happy which was late '40s.

Gracie Allen was retired due to poor health. Martin & Lewis had separated in 1956.

The 3 Stooges were really it for all we had left. Fortunately this movie was a big hit. It & their short films now being rerun on TV caused a revival for them.

More Stooge films were to follow.

I always felt that their cameo in Its A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was a kinda goodbye to the whole facet of comedy teams.

We really don't have them anymore & have not for some decades.

I miss them all.

[Bud Brewster]

[Gord Green]

This was, along with ABBOTT & COSTELLO GO TO MARS, a fun movie for a 12 year old to watch!

I still like it today.

[Pow]

And Bud & Lou never did make it to Mars despite the title of the picture!

[Bud Brewster]

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I wonder if the movie could be dubbed here and there so that all the references to Venus were changed to Mars?

Then again, it would be much easier to just change the name of the movie!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL was, according to Wikipedia, the first Three Stooges film to be released after their popularity surged in the late fifties.

It was followed by The Three Stooges in Orbit. I watched this during a marathon on TCM, the one celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The thing is, the Stooges end up on Venus in this one, not on the moon.

That's the Stooges for you — they can't even get that right. It was supposed to be on the moon!

I realized I did see this as a kid when that giant tarantula appeared, zapping the fleeing Stooges with a beam of fire. (This all looked like footage lifted from the film TARANTULA (1955) but I was told later that it's original footage).

The Venus landscape is identical to the desert landscape of Earth which we see in the early scenes, so there's not much attempt at visualizing an alien terrain — maybe this is on purpose.

The Stooges then make the acquaintance of a talking pony, er, unicorn and get captured by a cube-like robot with 4 mechanical arms, which shrinks them and then creates robotic duplicates of the three.

Too many Stooges for my taste!

What's weird is that the much later Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), which parodied/copied old-style fifties sci-fi movies about trips to Venus or the moon, seems to have lifted much of its scenes from this comedy. In other words, the Stooges beat that movie to it by almost 3 decades!


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Pow]

Always thought that computer that created the Stooge duplicates was a scary looking thing even though this was a comedy.

The giant Venusian spider would have been a perfect candidate for stop-motion animation for this film.

Come to think of it, it wouldn't have to be a giant spider at all.

The stop~motion animation model could have been a totally original looking alien creature.

Ray created aliens in his films "Twenty Million Miles to Earth," and "First Men In the Moon."

[Pow]

"Have Rocket, Will Travel." Columbia Pictures Corporation, Released on August 1, 1959, run-time 76 minutes.

Budget: $380,000. Thirteen-day shoot from May 18, 1959 until June 1, 1959.

The film's title is a parody of the popular TV western series "Have Gun, Will Travel" starring Richard Boone. And a darn rootin'-tootin' western it was.

This film was comedian Joe DeRita's first appearance as Curly Joe as part of the classic team.

In this film we see the Three Stooges land on the planet Venus.

They did the same thing earlier in their Three Stooges film shorts with Joe Besser as their third stooge.

"Space Ship Sappy" from April 18, 1957, aka "Rocket and Roll It," had Moe, Larry, and Joe land in a rocket ship on the planet Sunev. Venus spelled backwards.

"Outer Space Jitters," December 5, 1957 had them do the same thing---even reusing the Sunev gag again.

On that short we see Dan Blocker very early in his career. He plays a scary looking zombie.

The baggy spacesuits worn by the Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe were originally created for taller men.

These spacesuits appear in The Twilight Zone episode "Elegy" from February 19, 1960.

Robert Colbert plays Dr. Ted Benson in the film. It wouldn't be his last brush with sci~fi.

He would go on to play scientist Doug Phillips on The Time Tunnel (1966~'67) TV series.

Uni, the unicorn on Venus is voiced by actor Dallas McKennon who was known for his many voice work credits.

He performed the voice of Gumby on 14 episodes of the Gumby TV series, 1960-'67.

On screen, you might remember him from the Fess Parker TV show Daniel Boone (1964~'70) where he was Cincinnatus (1968-'70), who owned the store in Boonesborough, Kentucky.

Don Lamond, who does the opening narration for the movie was married to Larry Fine's daughter.

The outdoors scenic exterior locations for Venus were shot at the famous movie western Iverson Ranch.

Iverson Ranch has been utilized in over 3,500 film and television shows.

It was featured in the classic John Ford western "Stagecoach" from 1939.

Stagecoach was also significant in showing Hollywood and movie audiences that the western genre wasn't just something for kids, or as serials.

John Ford showed that a western can be adult and sophisticated as any of the serious and intelligent film genres. Kinda like the same evolution with science-fiction.

Other films at Iverson Ranch were : The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932).

And Bud, the opening to one of your favorite TV westerns, The Lone Ranger, was filmed at Iverson.

As Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe mosey along with Uni, they pass by a nice looking pond. This pond on the Iverson property only filled up with water after heavy rains.

The majority of the time it was dry. That is why it rarely pops up with water in the numerous films and TV shows shot there at the time.

Have Rocket was one of the final eye-poke scenes for the Stooges. The film received many complaints from mothers of children regarding the potential injury children might do to one another by imitating the Stooges.

Moe Howard disliked the film. He had begged Columbia Pictures for years to put the Three Stooges in feature length movies. Other Hollywood studios did so with comedy teams such as the Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis.

Why not the Stooges, Moe thought?

Columbia never really believed that the Stooges could carry a film, they were at their best in their film shorts felt the studio.

So Moe was thrilled to finally have the studio offer them a feature length film. Especially as Columbia was shutting down their film shorts division where the Stooges thrived.

However, Moe was dissatisfied with this picture. He felt it was too contrived. The scenes with the unicorn were silly.

Moe said that the finale where Larry & Curly Joe hit Moe in the face with pies while they are riding in the futuristic auto, was a gimmick the studio insisted upon.

The movie was a big hit for Columbia and spawned more Three Stooges films for the trio.

[Pow]

Interesting Coincidence SF Trope.

When the 3 Stooges first encounter the Venusian Master Computer, the VMC tells them that the living inhabitants of Venus constructed the VMC.

They gave him full authority to rule over Venus.

The VMC eventually destroyed them all and turned them into electrical energy.

On the classic Outer Limits episode "Demon with a Glass Hand" from October 17, 1964 written by the iconic Harlan Ellison, there is a scene in the finale that put me in mind of that Have Rocket Will Travel scene.

Trent (Robert Culp) discovers that he is a robot created by humans. In order to save humanity from the invading aliens the Kybens, the humans have been electronically transcribed onto a wire that is carried within Trent.

[Bud Brewster]

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After watching Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961) and being very impressed by the fact that was a serious and sincere medieval fantasy adventure, I decided to give this Stooges sci-fi comedy a chance.

I saw it at the Roosevelt Drive-in with my family in 1959 and was mildly amused (I was eleven years old), and I tried to enjoy it a few decades ago — without much success.

However, Mike (Pow) has recently inspired me to reconsidered my previously negative opinion of the Stooges, and when I discovered their was a reasonable good copy on YouTube I decided to watch it.

It was obvious, right from the start that — that unlike Snow White and the Three Stooges — Columbia pictures loaded up this movie with the typical Stooge's physical comedy, but I was determined to overlook this aspect of the movie and enjoy the science fiction aspects of the movie — if there actually were any.

I was surprised to discover that IMDB lists this trivia item.
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Included among the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 500 movies nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies.
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I can't quite concur with that claim.

But there is an amusing scene in which the boys attempt to secretly help an attractive lady scientist by inventing an improved version of her rocket fuel. They succeed when Larry accidentally mistakens a small sample of the fuel as a cup of coffee and adds sugar to it — which activates the fuel and causes Larry to spew flames from his mouth.

Things don't get interesting until the boys fuel up a rocket with their new propellant and (naturally) blast off by accident. The rocket is on autopilot (no surprise there either) and the guys make the trip to Venus in minutes flat.

Venus has a few mildly interesting points of interest, including some nice FX of a giant tarantula which spouts fire while chasing the guys.

But the silliness of the plot makes it hard to enjoy the movie. For example, a talking pony with a unicorn horn befriends the boys, and the four of them stroll along on Venus while singing a snappy song. (I mean . . . a sappy song.)

All in all, this movie is the polar opposite of Snow White and the Three Stooges, which excels in so many ways. It's truly amazing that the 1961 fantasy adventure wasn't successful.

_________ Have Rocket, Will Travel FULL MOVIE


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)