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The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 2:22 pm    Post subject: The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962) Reply with quote

______


With Edward Bernds directing and Emil Sitka playing the luny inventor, this film would have been Ka--razy even without The Three Stooges. Sitka is the perfect forerunner of Christopher Lloyd's Dr. Emmett Brown from "Back to the Future".

The Stooges play TV show host who help Sitka keep his submarine/tank invention out of the hands of Martian agents. That's a nice twist, eh? Martian trying to steel our science!

The producers decided to give the story a psuedo-horror look by having Sitka live in a run-down castle and by giving the Martians a Frankenstein appearance.

Carol Christensen is the pretty face with whom the boys flirt, and Nestor Paiva (the sleazy boat captain from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon") is the Martian leader — an interesting bit of casting.

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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Sep 02, 2022 1:37 pm; edited 5 times in total
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2016 10:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kind of interesting that in 1962 that of all the classic comedy teams, the Stooges were the last ones standing.

Laurel & Hardy, the first mega-popular screen comedians had done their last film, Utopia, in 1951.
Oliver passed away in 1957.

My very favorite, the Marx Brothers, did their official last team movie, A Night In Casablanca, in 1946.
Chico died in 1961.

Abbott & Costello's final film together was Dance With Me Henry, 1956.

Lou died in 1959.

Martin & Lewis finished up as a team with Hollywood Or Bust in '56. Ironically, the same year Bud & Lou split.

George Burns & Gracie Allen were seldom seen after their hit TV show ended after 8 seasons in 1958.

These comedy teams are generally considered superior to the 3 Stooges. Clever wordplay, pantomime, artistry were what many feel these teams were all about.

The Stooges were funny but were viewed as simply slapstick comics & not truly in the league with these other legendary teams.

And yet, by the 60s, the Stooges were going strong in feature films, while all these other terrific comedy teams were done.


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Rocky Jones
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 11:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Stooges big screen resurgence was due to Columbia's release of their series of shorts to TV in the 1950s. They found a huge new audience with kids like me who watched them daily every afternoon on their local independent station (in Dallas/Ft. Worth it was the once great Channel 11/KTVT). The studio had screwed them out of most of the massive profits from the shorts, but when they started doing features they finally got decent money.

As a kid I was a big fan of this film. My buddy Mark and I waited in a long line of kids for a Saturday morning matinee and were not disappointed. We loved the wacky machine and the sci-fi stuff. Mark (with help from his mother) was pretty crafty and even made himself an OK Halloween costume based on the aliens in the flick. He wore a half mask made of paper mech?? putty and made the ray gun from a bleach bottle and a broomstick. Hey, we were kids.

Somewhere around here I'm pretty sure I still have the Gold Key comic tied in to the movie. It was the only Gold Key title I ever remember that featured no comic drawings at all. It was made up entirely of photo stills shot during the film. If I recall correctly they just laid over dialog balloons. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be that valuable a collectible. The two copies that sold most recently on eBay went for $1 and $12.50. Now where did I put that Spiderman #1?
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You mean these?















Somehow some of the props of Forbidden Planet ended up in The Three Stooges In Orbit:



I certainly hope that these are NOT the descendants of the Krell!



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Abbott & Costello's final film together was Dance With Me Henry, 1956.

Lou died in 1959.

George Burns & Gracie Allen were seldom seen after their hit TV show ended after 8 seasons in 1958
.

According to A&C's children, the duo didn't split, they just took a break. The two had worked so long together, that they were tired, but they always intended to get back together. Lou Costello's death changed that. The A&C were good friends, and were always at each others homes, even after their hiatus.

Moe Howard didn't like A&C, for some reason he felt that they were copying the 3 Stooges. Perhaps, it was because Bud would always shove Lou around. That is one of the reason that Bud Abbott is considered one of the best straight men to have lived. He made you feel sorry for the comic, where it was usually the other way around.

After their tv show ended, Gracie Allen retired from the business.

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to Moe Howard's biography, the Stooges and Abbott & Costello would sometimes appear on the same bill.

He noticed Lou would study the Stooges act when Moe, Larry, & Curly were on stage.

He thought that some of Lou's comedic style was borrowed from Curly. Moe never stated that he did not like A&C.
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Rocky Jones
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
You mean these?

Indeed. These are rare scans of the interior of this comic. I see I was wrong and they didn't overlay dialog balloons, but just placed captions under each photo. I do wonder why they did it with photos, though. Perhaps Gold Key got the project a bit too late to have artists draw and color the whole thing. The comic was doubtless a great marketing tool, since comic reading kids were the prime market for the film.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

_______________________________________

Here's the trailer for this movie. It doesn't seem to be available from any of the download sources I'm familiar with.


__________ The Three Stooges In Orbit - trailer

__________

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

To be brutally honest, even as a seven-year-old kid, I never thought the Three Stooges were funny. They were just grotesque. I find their real-life history way more entertaining than any of the two-reelers or feature films they made.

YMMV, as they say.
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Brent Gair
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
To be brutally honest, even as a seven-year-old kid, I never thought the Three Stooges were funny. ...

I put the Stooges in a category like (but not identical to) my Jerry Lewis category.

I never found Jerry Lewis especially funny but he's firmly entrenched in that significant part of my brain where my sense of nostalgia and carefree childhood lives.

Similarly, I have no memory of really laughing at the Stooges...but I do have memories of seeing their 1960s movies at the drive-in with my cousins and watching their short films on early morning TV before school. As such, they now enjoy a place of affection in my video collection.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I've never cared for the Stooges, and even though I don't care for Lewis, I do like Visit to a Small Planet. It's partly nostalgia (I saw the movie in 1960 at the East Point Theater when I was twelve years old), but somehow a funny "Klaatu" has a certain appeal, and the movie has some amusing moments.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Trivia} Professor Danforth's cartoon machine was actually a new type of process that Norman Maurer was developing.

It never took off for some reason.

Seems a shame as it appeared to have intriguing possibilities.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The tank-submarine-helicopter vehicle was a nifty concept in this movie. It offered multiple capabilities in one machine.

That's not all that common an idea in sci-fi movies & television from the past.

Usually one device only did one thing. Look at our cell phones today & its many,many functions.

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea introduced the amazing Flying Sub that operated as both a deep submersible vehicle undersea as well as a flying craft.

UFO had Sky 1 that did the somewhat the same thing as the FS.

Star Trek:TOS really ramped it up with the introduction of their Tricorder device that had multiple functions.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Three Stooges Scrapbook was a color TV pilot that had the guys doing some routines and cartoons of the Stooges would be mixed in.

The pilot was not picked up, so this movie utilized twenty-minutes of footage from the pilot. The scenes with the Stooges in the haunted house were recycled from their TV pilot.

George N. Neise (Martian Ogg) and Rayford Barnes (Martian Zogg) both appear without their alien makeup in this movie as the airline pilot & co-pilot.

George N. Neise had worked earlier with Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. Neise played the roles of Ralph Dimsal and King Odious in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules which was released in February of 1962. Orbit was released on July 4, 1962.

The Martian space ships was stock footage from the Ray Harryhausen film Earth vs the Flying Saucers.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 10:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From author Bill Warren.

"The Three Stooges in Orbit is a silly, trivial little picture, but then again, that's what you'd expect, isn't it?"

"The main appeal of the Stooges was always to children and the childish, and still is."

"In their shorts, the Stooges never had to have personalities. They just had to be stupid little guys constantly hitting each other or having endless accidents. Here, as in there other features, they are required to be lovable as well, not a good idea, and the Stooges aren't really up to it. But for that reason, too, there's less of their traditional slapstick violence."

~ Warren doesn't really quantify what he means by "less" regarding the Stooges slapstick antics. I suppose it is less than what they performed throughout their short films, but not vastly less.

~ Their age may have been a factor by the time they were making their features. No longer young men, they were unable to perform some of the vigorous stunts they became so well known for.

~ Another factor that reduced the amount of the physical violence of the Stooges was television. Columbia Pictures had released the Stooges shorts for television in the 1950s. Kids took to 'em but many parents did not. They disapproved of the punishing slapstick stunts that comprised the shorts.The film makers were sensitive to the parents complaints and toned down the Stooges, somewhat, for the feature films. The studio knew that in order to receive the parents approval for kids to attend the Stooges movies, and bring in money, that they'd have to compromise on some of slapstick.

Warren sums up this film with: "The Three Stooges in Orbit" is undemanding, trivial fun for kids and the childlike; it's not badly made, it delivers the goods for its intended audience, and even provides some laughs for adults."

~ A fair review.
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