The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)

It's pointless to review the Stooges movies by comparing them to the shorts. These are two very different artforms. The Stooges shorts are easy to like, the movies need a bit of willing suspension of adulthood.I first saw Three Stooges in Orbit as a kid, and that's the way I'd suggest seeing it now. There are so many reasons I really love this film, but most of them won't make sense to a dried up adult.Even in this computer-graphic age, there's so much here that a kid just has to enjoy. The flying submarine, for starters. What a concept - it both hearkens back to Jules Verne, and anticipates Terry Gilliam by several decades. The goofy aliens. As a kid I was scared of them, amused by them, and just transfixed by the alien-ness of them. The wacky rotoscope animation process the Stooges are working on. Could that really have worked?The Stooges movies are very different from the shorts, in that they're actually about storytelling. But there's plenty of Stooge-mania along the way. The whole thing with the A-bomb in a dust storm is side-splitting. ("Visibility, zero!") The antics with a hole in the cellar wall, a pipe and a raygun. And others. But they're in support of a story.I was always aware that these movie-length Stooges were very different from the ones I saw in the shorts. For one thing, Curly was gone. For another, they were a lot older. But they were still geniuses at what they did: creating a magical world of laughter and imagination.To me, these creaky old low-budget films are cinema at its finest. They created a magical world for me when I was a kid. Decades later, they still play in my head.

To be honest I can't remember a whole lot from this film, but I do remember it being replayed a few times years back in the old UHF days. Whether I'm getting burnt out on reviewing other people's productions, or this was just not that good a film, I don't really know, but one of the few distinct memories I have of this film is the stooges riding the flying submarine absconded by the film's two antagonists. Ayup, between "It's a Wonderful Life", one of the many bikini films by American International, or a Bob Hope review, the Stooges and various films from the 30s up through the mid 60s would air on television, and "The Three Stooges in Orbit" was one of them.I didn't laugh a whole lot at this thing, but I was riveted to the antics because it was something different than "Days of our Lives" or any of the other midday drivel that was passed off to many a WASPy housewife during the 70s and 80s.It's not a stellar production from the Stooges, but it's something to kill time.Watch at your own risk.

First of all, the Stooges spend almost no time in orbit at all in this film. Maybe I was thinking of "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" when I thought this would be more space oriented. All that wouldn't matter if this had been any good.The movie starts out with a somewhat interesting narration by a Peter Graves-like voice, giving us a history of the centuries of speculations of what shape Martian life might take. It turns out the "startling answer" to this question is that Martians look like guys in crude rubber masks that are a cross between Frankenstein's monster and the people from the "Twilight Zone" episode "Eye of the Beholder." In fact, one of them is a guy in a rubber mask. Why did his superiors go to the trouble of giving him cosmetic surgery to look human if he's going to go and disguise himself as a Martian? Mars is in a lot of trouble anyway, if their entire invasion consists of two soldiers creeping around an old man's house.Somebody made a good point that at least the aliens speak another language instead of English, like so many sci-fi movies, but those scenes drag, as if the Martians are waiting for the viewers to catch up to the subtitles. This actually leads to one of the few humorous moments, where Moe does read the subtitles, but since this comes about fifteen minutes before the end of the movie, it doesn't help much.Maybe the haunted house elements made me start thinking this was a lot like a literal, full-length, live action version of an old Hannah Barbera cartoon. The humor is so lame and predictable. How many times did somebody say some variation on, "I'm not dumb, you know," and then they go and do something dumb? Oh, look, somebody has just carefully laid out a bunch of pies while the Stooges are wreaking havoc in front of some distinguished army brass. I wonder what's going to happen next?There's also a pointless romance between the professor's daughter and an army captain. They spend most of their time staring dreamily at each other. Later, you know the captain is at the door by the way the romantic music starts playing before she can even answer it, which is one of the unintentionally funny moments.It's probably obvious I'm not a Three Stooges fan. I saw this as the second part of a double feature, and I stuck around to see if my opinion of them improved at all. I should've walked out like nearly the entire audience did. I did like that made for TV bio-pic where Paul Ben-Victor played Moe, however. I just apparently can't stand their shtick.

Hi Im 13 years old. I love the three stooges! The Three Stooges In Orbit! Is A Very Funny Movie I Have It!! Three Stooges In Orbit Is About The Three Stooges They Have A Job Hosting A Kids Tv Show Where They Show Their Cartoons Of Them!! And Work At A Space Station! One Day Curly Joe Hits A Button On The Space Ship That Takes Moe,Larry And Curly Joe, In Orbit! And Just Every Where!! And They Meet Some Aliens Ogg And Zogg!! They Are Crazy!! But What Are They Going To Do If They Don't Get The Space Ship Down In Time To Get To The TV Station To Host The Show!! Watch And Find Out... Very Good And Funny Movie!