Have Rocket -- Will Travel

The Three Stooges had about the longest run of any act in the Short Subject field. As an act on their own (after Ted Healy),their career went from 1934 ("WOMAN HATERS") to 1958, when the last of the 2 reelers featuring Joe Besser as the third Stooge was released. It was just about then that COLUMBIA PICTURES decided to release their backlog to Television.After all, the Stooges were now out dated, has beens.Curly and Shemp Howard, who both gave so much energy to the act, were both now gone.

Well, the shorts made it to local TV stations, and kids who had never heard of finger pokes and tearing out of tonsils rapidly became their greatest fans. Everyone was watching. All of a sudden, The Stooges were a hot item. Personal appearances,comic books, records, bubble gum cards and all sorts of other merchandising appeared on the scene.

Ironically, the Stooges got no financial rewards for their old Columbia Shorts being shown on TV. But if it weren't for their timely release, none of the rest would be possible.

Naturally, there would be more motion pictures, but the short subject field was really nothing by now. So, it was decided that "the boys" would go into feature films. The first, HAVE ROCKET WILL TAVEL was produced and played the neighborhood shows in 1959, in the Autumn I think.

Well, when we saw the advertisements on TV, we (there were 5 of us Ryan Kids)let out a cheer. It was at our neighborhood theater, and it was Saturday. We went to the Matinée that day. Well, it was us and every other kid in the neighborhood at the Ogden Theater that day. The Stooges' comeback was in full swing now.

As a Stooges'picture,it was both familiar and different. They had been in features before, but not as the starring act. They went through the sci-fi story well enough. The story did incorporate a lot of schtick from their old 2 reeler days. The 3rd Stooge was now veteran Burlesque Comic Joe DeRita (nicknamed 'Curly Joe') who bore some general resemblance to Curly Howard, who of course died in 1952. The story had a sort of romantic sub-plot between two of the professors at the space institute. (the female character called 'Dr. Ingrid', played by Anna Lisa a Scandanavian actress who looked sort of like a 'road show' Ingrid Bergman. They even had a short musical interlude, using a forgettable song.Oh well,at least it gave us a good time to slip out to the lobby and get some popcorn.

When we left the show that Saturday, we were a little disappointed with Have Rocket Will Travel (the title a spoof of a popular western TV series of that day). Just about every kid thought that it could have been better.But, on the other hand, it was a new Stooges picture, and that was truly good news.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this "comeback" film was that it is the first Stooges film that was made for the juvenile trade. Even though it was those kids who were responsible for the Stooges' resurgence, their previous movies were made for general audience viewing.

This movie is the equivalent of a satisfying trip to your favorite fast food restaurant. Let's face it, if you're in the mood for a quarter pounder with cheese than the most delicious sirloin steak isn't going to satisfy you --- only that greaseburger will do. By the same token if you're looking for some low-brow Stooge fun then Ernst Lubitsch at his peak ain't gonna do it for you but this film will. Sure, it's not even the Stooges at their best, their glory days were almost twenty years in the past, but they still had some of the old zip and all the old shtick is trotted out like it was brand new and mixed with enough fifties sci-fi clichés to provide a satisfying junk meal. In fact a straight sci-fi movie like QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE could have used some of this movie's imagination and energy. I particularly liked the giant fire spewing tarantula, an effect pulled off quite well I might add, at least as well as Universal's "classic" TARANTULA. And I have to admit I find the title song kind of catchy. So sue me.

Even non-Stooge fans will be mildly amused by this modest little sci-fi comedy -- which, along with the 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 in 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 futuristic car, a giant fire-breathing tarantula, and three evil Venusian Stooge look-a-likes who follow the boys back to Earth.

Comedy science fiction was an active sub-genre during the late 1950's/early 1960s. In addition to `Have Rocket, Will Travel', there was `The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock', `The Absent Minded Professor', `Visit to a Small Planet', `Son of Flubber', `Invasion of the Star Creatures', `The Three Stooges in Orbit', and several others.

It seems by this point that the Stooges seemed apologetic about their work. There was once a time when the Three Stooges could hit each other all they wanted without fear, but by 1959, when they were re-discovered by kiddies on TV, they had to tone down the violence a little. `Have Rocket, Will Travel', their first feature, has less slaps and eye pokes than their average two-reeler, thus resulting in less laughs. The Three Stooges play…The Three Stooges, and this time they're janitors at NASA. A pretty scientist (Anna Lisa) is about to be fired because her attempts to send a spaceship to Jupiter have been unsuccessful. To help her, the Stooges figure out what was wrong, but accidentally send the rocket while they're still in it. They land on Jupiter find a talking Unicorn, and get into some trouble with an evil computer that makes evil mechanic clones of them. Will they survive? The problem with `Have Rocket, Will Travel' is that it's talking down to a juvenile audience and trying to please the kiddies instead of being funny. What we're left with is Three nice Stooges and a talking Unicorn, which is so silly that it's virtually indescribable. And what about the Jupiter scenes? They appear to have been hastily filmed in a national park hoping the audience wouldn't notice the obvious flaws. `Have Rocket, Will Travel' is certainly likable, and it has one or two enjoyable musical numbers, but it just doesn't have the primitive humour and the laughs of their shorts from the 30s and 40s. However, it did spawn a Three Stooges feature film series that included `Snow White and the Three Stooges', `The Three Stooges in Orbit', and `The Outlaws is Coming!'

We can all agree that the original Stooges with Curly and Shemp will always be the best, but this at least tried to do something different. Did it work? That's up to the person watching, but it could have been much, much worse.

I think the biggest issue is that this doesn't seem like a traditional Stooges sketch (obviously), but what I mean is that it feels like you're almost watching two completely different movies. You have the Stooges and then you have a sci-fi movie. The Stooges are doing what they do best (even if the slapstick is toned down by this point in their career because of Karen's [yes, they existed then too]) and the sci-fi is just doing sci-fi. It feels like it's to conflicting genres that don't meld together, like someone had an idea for a movie, but they didn't have enough to fill it and someone said "hey, let's throw in the Three Stooges" or the other way around. The sci-fi wants to be serious and the Stooges wants to be goofy and that just doesn't work well together.

It's well known that movies from this era always pictured the lead male characters as bull-headed with a "take what I want" attitude. You have to forgive them for this because that's what it was like when making these movies back then and it may seem sexist by today's standards (I'm not going any further than that). However, Dr. Ted Benson just needs to be smacked upside the head. Even by 50's movie standards, I thought this character was way out of line and the fact that the love interest, Dr. Ingrid, even fell for him was a slap in the face of everyone watching. I understand that none of the Stooges would have ended up with her (it's not their style), but I felt really uneasy watching his performance and the way he literally forces himself on her.

At a budget of $380,000 (only 3.5mil adjusted for today), it does have some rather decent practical effects, especially considering this is a Stooges movie and not a dedicated sci-fi movie we're used to from this era. While the giant spider is just a silhouette, it's at least convincing that it's really there on the ground with the other actors. There's a scene where the Stooges are made smaller and stuffed in a cage that was done very well and it was almost seamless from closeups to wide shots showing the difference in sizes. There is also a scene of Stooges doubles that appear on screen with the real Stooges and while I know matting techniques aren't really anything new, it's rare to see an actor playing his literal clone on the screen with himself at the same time (let alone three) in movies like this.

I can't say this would have worked better as a traditional Stooges sketch, but it was apparent that the writers didn't have much to work with and tried to pad out the run time by making many scene unnecessarily longer than they needed to be. Then party scene at the end is a perfect example, it just seems like it should have been half the length, but they kept drawing it out longer and longer. There are a few scenes where you will be wondering when it ends.

Overall, this was still a fun movie to watch, but it probably would have been much better if it had been done earlier in the life of the franchise.