One of the happiest moviegoing memories of my life did not take place in a cinema, but inside the auditorium of Junior High School 141 in the Bronx, New York, when I was in seventh grade. For reasons that had nothing to do with educational enlightenment, someone in charge decided it would be a good idea to show “The Three Stooges in Orbit” to the kids during their lunch break.
Whenever I watch this film I can still hear the large and packed auditorium full of 11- and 12-year-olds squealing in laughter at the knockabout mayhem created by the zany trio. Even today, the inner child that still lurks within me holds a very special feeling for this wonderfully warped film.
The genius of “The Three Stooges in Orbit” is the unashamed silliness that it brings to the screen. Nothing in the film makes any sense, which of course makes perfect sense to the inner child who wants entertainment and not art. After all, why would an eccentric inventor of a combination tank-submarine-helicopter (played by longtime Stooges’ foil Emil Sitka with gusto) want to hire three barely employed television comedians (Moe, Larry and Curly-Joe) to guard his creation while no one is aware that the inventor’s basement is occupied by Martians that look like a cross between Karloff’s Frankenstein monster and Chaney’s opera phantom while wearing Lugosi’s vampire cape?
There is a romantic subplot between the inventor’s pretty daughter and a handsome military officer, but they barely intrude on the proceedings. And for a film aimed at the 1962 kiddie matinee trade, there are a few surprisingly sophisticated gags including the Stooges reading the on-screen subtitles that translate the Martians’ language and the invaders’ declaration of hitting the Earthlings where it really hurts – in this case, by aiming their death ray at Disneyland. There’s also referencing to the then-popular Twist dance craze that pops up unexpectedly and hilariously in the film’s final gag.
As for the Stooges – yes, their late-career feature films lacked the feral madness of the classic short films of the 1930s and 1940s, but so what? They were older but certainly no wiser, and in some ways it is even funnier to see them as grouchy, craggy old men getting smacked about and creating mayhem wherever they go. Even the notorious Curly-Joe DeRita (who is not widely loved by many in the Stooges fan base) has a wildly funny scene when a model of the tank-submarine-helicopter flies into the bathroom and attacks him in a shower. We don’t see the assault on screen – it happens behind a shower curtain – but his squealing while the flying model violates his obese nakedness sounds a lot like Ned Beatty’s porcine bleating in “Deliverance.” There is also a somewhat risque scene (by 1962 standards) where that flying model invades the bath of a neighboring young lady whose dilemma is witnessed by the voyeuristic Stooges.
As a side note: The Three Stooges don’t actually go into orbit in this film. But then again, Abbott and Costello never met Frankenstein (they met his monster) and they did not go to Mars (they went to Venus by way of New Orleans), nor did the Marx Brothers spend a single night in either the opera or Casablanca. Ah, titles can be so confusing.
And while I cherish my screening experience of “The Three Stooges in Orbit,” how I envy those who saw the film in its initial theatrical release – Columbia Pictures paired it on a double feature with “Mothra.” Damn, it must have been the moviegoing experience of that year!