| Have Rocket, Will Travel (The Three Stooges) [VHS] |
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Product Details
Have Rocket, Will Travel is the first Three Stooges feature film after the team became television icons and Joe DeRita was called in to replace Joe Besser (who had replaced Shemp, who had replaced Curly). Aimed at a younger audience, it included a good deal of the physical violence their Snow White film tried to avoid. Curly Joe was given the old Curly shtick of being struck by a tool, exclaiming a painful "Oooo" and then giving a surprised reaction when the tool appears bent from the contact with his cement- like head. He is also prone to a weaker version of his role model's "Woowoowoo." The plot revolves around the team's accidental launch into space and their adventures on a Venus that looks identical to Earth, including breathable air but housing a giant tarantula that breathes fire and a unicorn that speaks slightly archaic English. There is also an unconvincing robot that is lonesome enough to create three fellow robots in the form of the three Earthlings. This leads merely to a routine already familiar to viewers of old-time comedies: a chase down a corridor lined with doors through which the six are exiting and reentering in a physically impossible way. The final sequence in which the returning "heroes" wreck a social event is overly familiar from the earlier films, especially the old "sofa spring stuck the rear" routine; and indeed it all seems tacked on to stretch the film to its 76 minutes. Light-comedy veteran Jerome Cowan does his best in a role that would have been handled by Jimmy Finlayson in a Laurel & Hardy film. It is good to hear the team sing the title and closing songs, but they add little to the film. Children will love this feature, but they must be advised that the eye-poking and hitting are all tricks not to be emulated. --Frank Behrens
Product Reviews
 (5 stars) - NOT ON DVD? !!!!@@@@???!!!!
Anybody know why this best of the Stooges, their first movie is not out on DVD??!! All of their others are!!
(5 stars) - Have Rocket
I do not own this movie, But i have seen it a thousand times. It's my favorite out of their features besides Snow White and the 3 Stooges. I would love to see it be brought out on DVD like all of the other great three stooges classics.I think that it's fantastic that they sing in the film that's a classic. Although i would have loved to have seen Curly Howard in the film. Don't get me wrong, i liked Curly-Joe DeRita, but he wasn't at all funny as Curly Howard. I would recommend this movie to any three stooges fan. Especially if you're just now being introduced to them this would be a great film to get you started!
 (4 stars) - The Stooges finally get "launched" into movie stardom
With newcomer Curly look-a-like Joe DeRita joining the team, the Three Stooges finally (after 24 years of shorts!) made the jump to feature films with "Have Rocket, Will Travel".
An often bizarre adventure (The Stooges encounter such things as a friendly alien unicorn, an unfriendly giant fire-breathing tarantula, and a trio of robots resembling you-know-who), their feature debut confirmed that the Stooges were back, and bigger & more popular than ever.
Lightweight in plot--and budget--the Stooges succeed on clever scripts such as this one, which places most of the more violent slapstick moments on others, yet gives them plenty of room to clown. Besides this is the fact that, after years of hard labor & exposure, the Stooges were immediately identifiable personalities, and could carry a picture on this strength alone.
Just one question: WHEN are Columbia/Sony Pictures going to wake up and give this movie the DVD treatment as well??
(5 stars) - Moe and Larry welcom Curly Joe DeRita
In 1957,the late Moe Howard and the late Larry Fine finished their 24-year business at Columbia Pictures,filming 190 two-reel shorts with Moe's brothers Curly and Shemp and Joe Besser,respectively. Besser quit The Three Stooges to take care of his ill wife and the Stooges continued their careers with feature films. So Joseph Wardell,aka Curly Joe DeRita became the third Stooge. In fact,Wardell was originally chosen for the third Stooge after Shemp died in 1955. But Wardell was working with another act at the time and was contractually forbidden to quit. But when that contract expired around the time of Besser's exit,Wardell again got the chance to join the team and did so. So,we see the boys visiting outer space,complete with gags,of course. There's a party at the end,and of course,pie-throwing. What a hilarious film! A must for all Stooge fans.
 (2 stars) - Not as good as the other Stooges full-length feature, Three Stooges in Orbit.
The Three Stooges work as maintenance men at a rocket research facility. The film begins with stock footage showing a rocket taking off, but wavering shortly after blast off, and going off course, though the event of crashing is not shown. Then, we are shown the rocket ship sticking nose down in the ground (it is a life-sized model, not an actual rocket ship). The Three Stooges are asked to stand guard at the crash site, but they somehow enter the ship, and it tips upright, and by accident the Stooges start the ignition, and the ship zooms off to another planet, where it lands.
There is a decent zero-gravity episode, where Larry is shown floating about, attempting to retrieve a floating book.
There is little attempt to make the "other planet" seem other-worldly. It is just a desert, perhaps not far from Los Angeles. Anyway, the Stooges encounter a 50 foot spider that emits a jet of flames. Then a futuristic flying car materializes in a puff of smoke, and the Stooges board the car, and it takes them to a laboratory. Once in the laboratory, the Stooges encounter a talking robot with four arms (people inside the cubical robot, with their arms inserted into the robot's arms). And so on, and so on.
At the start of the picture we are introduced to a female Ph.D.-level rocket scientist. The director and screenwriter are to be commended for putting a female in this prominent role in a movie made way back when (1959). Another scientist, a young Robert Colbert, is shown wooing the female. The appearance of Robert Colbert was quite startling to me. Many Americans know him as a co-star, with James Darrin, in the TIME TUNNEL television series from the 1960s. TIME TUNNEL was an excellent science fiction series (I recommend the episode showing the Trojan Horse, the episode in occupied France during World War II, and the French Revolution episode).
HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL also includes a lengthy plumbing episode, taken from one of the Stooges earlier short features about plumbers. The plumbing episode, which includes floods and a multitude of strangely arranged pipes and joints, does not really fit into the story. One gets the overall impression that the Stooges were running short on comedic ideas. HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL lacks the zaniness of some of the Stooges' earlier efforts, or the later film, THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT. TWO STARS.
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