Our three heroes who are in the process of being kicked out by landlady Maudie Prickett answer an advertisement by nutty professor Emil Sitka who is conducting some way out experiments. But he's on the money because Martians have actually infiltrated the professor's household to spy and report on his progress.

This was one zany film and it had a lot of good laughs. The heavily made up Martians who talk in subtitled gibberish and gesture a lot remind me of Khrushchev and his UN temper tantrums.

As for Sitka who gets his share of laughs as well as the Three Stooges he's invented an all purpose land, air and sea vehicle that he gets the Stooges to test drive. Only Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe could pick up an atomic bomb from a desert test site and use it as a carburetor for the vehicle. It does come in handy for the final battle with the Martians.

This one I have to say approaches the short subject type zaniness that the 3 Stooges had in their prime.

Having previously reviewed Soup to Nuts which had Ted Healy with Moe, Larry, and Shemp, Violent is the Word for Curly with Moe, Larry, and Curly, Swing Parade of 1946 with the same Stooge members, and Hold That Lion! with Moe, Larry, Shemp, and Curly-with hair!-in a cameo, I'm now going to review The Three Stooges in Orbit with Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. This was the most lame thing I've seen them involved with before their subsequent cartoon series put them even lower in quality. I mean, the script doesn't really go anywhere, the romantic leads are soooo bland, and the only visual gag that I found even remotely funny was when the helicopter blades conveniently took some pies from a table and hit all those superior Army officers in their faces! (That, and a turn-the-table-top-over-to-reveal-something-different-under-it bit.) Emil Sitka, who's to the Stooges what James Finlayson is to Laurel & Hardy, seems almost a little embarrassed to have to do both comic scenes with the boys and then have to play it straight as the father of a grown woman. I did like seeing Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe made up entirely in white paint doing the Twist, then having them animated and seeing Moe reading the English subtitles of the Martians was another amusing bit. And some of the beginning credit animation was cool. And hearing the Hamms beer jingle ("From the land of sky blue waters...") and the Greyhound bus slogan ("Leave the driving to us") was pretty amusing. Otherwise, everything-especially the direction of the usually reliable Ed Bernds-was just tired and worn out. So on that note, I'd only recommend The Three Stooges in Orbit if you're a completist of the boys. P.S. Besides Bernds, two of the players-Edson Stroll who plays Captain Tom Andrews and George N. Neise who plays Ogg and an airline pilot-were also born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.

This is one of the weaker things the later Stooges did, and you can mark that down as coming from a lifetime fan of all their two-reel shorts (be they with Curly, Shemp or Joe) as well as their feature films with Curly Joe DeRita. This movie just flat out ain't very funny. Having Moe, Larry and Curly Joe tangle with old professor Emil Sitka and cool-looking Frankensteinian martians (well, they look cool to those of us who grew up loving cheesy monster movies) should have helped make for a sure fire bullseye. Instead, this nonsense is all over the place, hopping from one unfunny bit of business to the next, trying to fill in the running time with all sorts of unrelated junk (including a meaningless relationship for the professor's daughter). This makes their Joe Besser shorts like OUTER SPACE JITTERS and SPACE SHIP SAPPY look positively first-rate. ** out of ****