Saturday, August 21, 2010

HAVE ROCKET--WILL TRAVEL - Duning/Styne - "Somebody Dropped A Rocket" (1959)

"Have Rocket--Will Travel" is an insane movie for sure, but the most insane part is that it is almost impossible to find a copy for some damn reason, I mean come on, it's the freakin' Three Stooges! Doesn't every person alive deserve to see everything ever done by the Three Stooges or what? What's wrong with the world today? (Breaking News!! I searched for almost two years to find a copy of this movie, and as I wrote this, I just found this Crackle site where "Have Rocket Will Travel" streams full screen beautifully, Enjoy, because this is your lucky day!) The world is redeemed for one fleeting moment!!

Sweet stock shot to get things rolling, and set the scene at the "National Space Foundation!"

Our heroes Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe are the Maintenance Men at the facility, that reads, I.E. janitors, three each! I don't think I have ever in my life had anybody tell me that they thought the Three Stooges were gay! They just slept together because they were good buddies! It didn't have to be sexual back in the 50's! And to think people want to talk crap about SpongeBob!

A dud rocket lands by their living quarters with a monkey in it, and when they get digging to get to the hatch, Moe bends the pick on Curly-Joe's head! Kids, don't try this trick at home!!

This is so stupid, it's one of my favorite gags, where they are trying to lift up a hatch door, that they're standing on!!

They finally get in to save the monkey and there's this cute scene where Curly-Joe and the monkey are making faces at each other....

....and right at the cut, the little sumbitch puts his head down and bites Curly-Joe right on the hand! Tabonga told me that both Curly-Joe and Joe Besser admitted that they didn't dig being Stooges that much, because they got hurt too much, and I believe it!! The original iconic Curly Howard died way back in 1952 and was never in a full length Stooges flick! His position was then filled by Shemp Howard (the original third member), Joe Besser as Joe, who quit after two years because he didn't like getting hit, and finally Joe DeRita as Curly-Joe!

The boys take a lab coffee break with beautiful scientist Anna-Lisa as Dr. Ingrid Naarveg, who they are very smitten with!

I just like this shot of the three of them!! Moe Howard was 62 years old when this film was made!

In order to help Dr. Ingrid, the boys invent a new rocket fuel by putting everything in the lab including popcorn in a big vat. Larry accidentally becomes a victim of the big switcheroo, and drinks some of the rocket fuel!

The music for "Have Rocket--Will Travel" was conducted by another Dungeon fave, Mischa Bakaleinikoff, who might be the all time champion of composers with a massive 458 credits either as Composer, Musical Director, or Composer of stock music!

Their launch into space was one big mistake, and then they land on Venus, which looks suspiciously like the foothills of California!!

Wonder where they got this idea, the movie, "Tarantula" was made 4 years earlier! Well, at least they mixed it up a little and made this Venusian tarantula be able to shoot death rays at their butts!

The original theme song music was written by George Duning, and the lyrics were written by Stanley Styne, and the song is reprised here after the boys meet a Talking Unicorn on Venus, and find out they can breathe!

The Talking Unicorn leads them to this totally bitchin' Venusian Space Car that was probably a Mercury, since they were the only company cool enough to have cars named The Comet, or The Meteor. Shows you where it got them since Ford decided to drop the whole Mercury line as of this year!

Next they are taken to see the Grandmaster of Venus, the big guy in charge, The Talking Robot!!

First thing the robot does is shrink them down to size, and put them in a bird cage!

Then the big boss robot does a mind meld on them, which creates an exact set of duplicated evil Stooge robots, who chase them around for a while until they are able to finally escape, get back past the giant tarantula again, and blast off back to earth! Whew!!

Once safely back on earth, the boys are treated like the heroes that they really are!

But these are The Three Stooges we're talking about, so before you know it, Larry's on his knees getting stomped on the dance floor, Curly-Joe gets a face full of cake, and a spring stuck on his butt, and like always, Moe just loses it!

Nadia Sanders is the tall and gorgeous calm before the storm!

And then before you know it again, all Hell is breaking out at this high society party, and everybody is getting involved, but it's not like it was unexpected!

The evil robots followed them all the way back to earth, so the boys ditch the whole scene, steal the Mercury, and head back out into space and The End!! It's a beautiful moment!!

9 comments:

  1. awesome, i have to go check this out right away! Curly-Joe DeRita is my third favorite third wheel and i have no fourth! beautiful work on this post, by the way!

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  2. Grandmaster Of Venus looks eerily similiar to Master Cylinder from the Felix The Cat cartoons of the late fifties!!

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  3. The Stooges were never as popular as they were at this time when they sold them to the kiddies...same as the Famous Monsters!..I had a friend that had one of those personalized Happy Birthday records sung to him by the 3 Stooges.

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  4. And what's even cooler, that personalized record probably only cost like $3.00!!

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  5. Nice, thanks for the mention! We are looking to get more Stooges flicks (we have a lot of their TV exploits - but the films bring a different dimension). Please let me know if you have any great Stooges films you want to see on Crackle and I will do what I can to get them. Shoot content requests to the wall of our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/crackle) and let's see what can be done....thanks!

    Chad, Community Manager
    Crackle

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  6. Thanx Chad, glad to be of service, I was just happy to find your site and pass it on, and it looks like you've got all the main Stooges features covered already with "The Three Stooges Go Around The World In A Daze," "The Three Stooges In Orbit," and "The Three Stooges Meet Hercules!" Keep up the good work!!!

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  7. Joe Derita came in handy after 26 Years with Curly to Joe Besser in the shorts department at Columbia Pictures

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  8. I agree, But I miss o' Curly, Shemp too.

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  9. Joe DeRita (Curly Joe)July 5, 2013 at 6:19 PM

    I like Moe and Larry, swell fellas

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