FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Three Stooges’ First Ever Feature Film is Not Exactly Out of this World
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you don’t need a poke in the eye tell you you’re doing something wrong…
Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959)
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Directed by: David Lowell Rich
Maybe he was kidding.
It’s possible that when he wrote the line “There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Last Tycoon might not have meant that to be taken literally. The work was unfinished, after all, and it might well have been a random note jotted down for a character to say before encountering Jay Gatsby 2.0 at some point…
Because of that, poor Fitzgerald gets beaten over the head with all sorts of examples of folks who did get second acts. Like, say, the Three Stooges…
The original Stooges during their early Columbia short subjects days
By the end of the 1950s, it was thought that their time in the spotlight was over. After Curly Howard’s stroke, Shemp Howard’s heart attack, and Joe Besser leaving the group to tend to his sick wife, what seemed to be the final blow was Columbia shutting down its short subjects department in December 1957 with no severance offered to either Moe Howard or Larry Fine. It seemed that the act was truly over then.
But television needed content, and Columbia had that in spades in the 190 two-reelers the troupe had done for them for 24 years. Suddenly, with TV stations getting great ratings when they showed the shorts, there was demand for the act again, and the studio that cut them loose re-signed them, this time for features.
If you were tempted to think of the re-formation of the Three Stooges after all that as something akin to a “moon shot,” you wouldn’t be that far off the mark:
We open at the control room overseen by the National Space Foundation, where their latest rocket has about the same success as most of the actual US rocket program had during this time. This upsets the NSF’s director, J. P. Morse (Jerome Cowan), who places the blame on rocket scientist Dr. Ingrid Naarveg (Anna-Lisa in her first theatrical role).
Dr. Naarveg is a dedicated professional who lives and breathes rockets. And imagine what she could do were she not being pursued to distraction by her colleague, base psychiatrist Dr. Ted Benson (Robert Colbert), who would continuously be one serious conversation away from a long talk with Human Resources if this wasn’t a 1950s comedy…
Having a hard time fending off her colleague and under the gun to produce a better burning fuel for the rocket project, she finds a sympathetic ear among the three janitors hired to keep the joint clean (Moe Howard, Fine, and new Stooge Joe “Curly Joe” DeRita in his first outing with the group). As Dr. Naarveg is the only person on the base who treats them with kindness, the janitors decide to return the favor, coming up with the idea of trying to mix a new rocket fuel formula for her, using the throw-everything-in-the-sink-and-pray-it-don’t-go-BOOM method of experimentation.
Despite themselves, the laws of physics, and raw common sense, these janitors come up with a rocket fuel that they fill the next test rocket with. Thanks to the Stooges’ general mayhem, and despite physics and logic, the rocket takes off, and puts our three heroes protagonists goof-balls on Venus.
Yes, they do encounter a giant fire-breathing tarantula, a talking unicorn (voiced by Dal McKennon, one of the hardest-working voice actors in history), a robot overlord (voiced by Don Lamond in his first credited role), and three robot stooges played by the real Stooges. Why? Again, it’s the Stooges, without physics or sense, which pretty well sums up everything here…
The film we have is an oddity; it’s not a stand-alone comedy that non-Stooges fans can embrace, but compared with their shorts it seems lacking. One could blame the lack of connection to the film on not feeling that DeRita meshed as well with the other two, or on watching the Stooges well past their prime trying to do their old act before a director who was more comfortable with television work. Or it could be having to hang the gags on a story coming from Raphael Hayes, who himself was more comfortable with television work. All of that, however, would be unfair to everyone mentioned above.
The most glaring issue is having an act that works well filling up short films, no more than 20 minutes apiece, having to hold the audience for 76 straight minutes. The frenetic pacing of a Stooges outing is meant to burn like a rocket ignition, send the projectile into orbit, and allow us to go on to something else now that the rocket’s out of sight. The routine was never meant to go on that long, something kept in mind by the Farrellys when they did their Stooges film; by having three 20-minute acts in their film that could each stand alone, they kept to the original formula and prevented overwhelming the audience, something Rich should have tried.
The film just manages to feel tired as it tires out the audience. Just the title alone suggests its inability to get away from television, much like the film’s stars and crew; it’s a take-off on the Western Have Gun – Will Travel.
Imagine if more effort had been made in putting this together; say, if Columbia had gotten option rights to Robert Heinlein’s Have Space-Suit – Will Travel. Using that as a take-off point might have given the Three Stooges something more memorable to return to work with for their audience.
Sadly, there’s no second chances here with this one…
NEXT TIME: When the world is threatened by mad science in the hands of a driven maniacal genius, we can always count on to save us… a bumbling idiot?!?
