Thursday, April 12, 2012

ARACHNID-WITS

The Three Stooges, the movie revival of the slapstick trio that is the long-cherished project of the The Farrelly Brothers, opens tomorrow. So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s give the nod to this giant fire-breathing tarantula…


…a specimen of the local fauna on the planet Venus, as envisioned in the 1959 Stooges feature Have Rocket, Will Travel.


This movie was very far indeed from the finest hour for the franchise, at this stage consisting of Moe Howard, Larry Fine and “Curly Joe” DeRita, but when I saw it, screened in the basement of my Presbyterian church to fight off kid boredom on a Saturday afternoon in summer when I was eight or nine, I thought it a fine piece of cinema. I wasn’t much of a Stooge fan as a kid—my appreciation of them has grown in adulthood—but I liked the movie for its imaginative sci-fi elements, not least because of this combustible creature.

The film may be viewed in its entirety, here.

1 comment:

  1. My Dad took us to see Have Rocket, Will Travel @ Strand Theatre (106 W. Washington) in 1959/60. I was only seven or eight and don't remember anything except thinking they seemed like old men, movie had terrible production values and sure weren't like the guys we saw on TV. And they were *still* making features as late as 1965. (I think. Didn't they do a western--The Outlaws is Coming? Hahaha.) And then there were those terrible cartoons, with 16 mm live action intros. . .Why anyone would try to revive them (except on no-chance-in-hell of making money) is beyond me.

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