After Shemp became the third Stooge the monkey business continued when a gorilla with a scalpel almost operated on him in CRIME ON THEIR HANDS (1948). And in BUBBLE TROUBLE (a 1953 reworking of their 1947 film ALL GUMMED UP) the Stooges' new youth elixir unexpectedly turned their landlord into a human gorilla. The angry ape-man lifted Moe by the ankles and pounded his head to the floor until a flat-topped Moe looked like the Stoogenstein Monster. Luckily, Shemp was able to beat Moe's head back into shape with a hammer. After all, what are friends for?

Several other films from the Shemp years feature horror elements. SHIVERING SHERLOCKS (1948) featured a monstrous cleaver-weilding killer named Angel (see top of page) played by Duke York who had played the wolf man in IDLE ROOMERS. In HOT SCOTS (1948) our fearless heroes spend the night in a spooky Scottish castle and experience eerie occurrences similar to those in IF A BODY MEETS A BODY. In THE GHOST TALKS (1949) the boys are moving men hired to remove items from an ancient castle. They soon find that a suit of armor they are moving is haunted and series of "strange happenings" follow.

Looks like the boys have found a clue to the murders in WHO DONE IT?

In WHO DONE IT? (1949) the Stooges try to solve a murder mystery in a creepy mansion. They are menaced by a gang of crooks and a reanimated corpse called "the goon" once again played by Duke York. Dressed in a black suit and with a wild mane of black hair, he looked like a cross between Universal's Frankenstein Monster and Conrad Veidt in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. A clever sequence of blackouts gags during the big fight is the highlight of this short.

In the 1950 short DOPEY DICKS (detectives, that is) the Stooges are again in the clutches of a mad doctor. The doc has created an artificial man whose only problem is he keeps walking into things and knocking his head off. The solution: replace the artificial head with a human one. Enter the Stooges who spend the rest of the film trying to keep their heads. Spooky scenes from some of these shorts also appeared in later Stooges films like SCOTCHED IN SCOTLAND (1954), CREEPS (1956) and FOR CRIMIN' OUT LOUD (1956).

Dan Blocker (later Hoss Cartwright on TV's BONANZA) played an alien Neanderthal in OUTER SPACE JITTERS.

Robot Stooge duplicates get their morning wake-up zap.

But soon, because of the popularity of their old films on afternoon television, The Three Stooges were in demand again. In 1959 Moe and Larry, now joined by Joe DeRita as "Curly Joe", were called back to Columbia to star in their first feature length movie. Like some of their last shorts, it also had a sci-fi theme. The title, HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL, was inspired by the title of the then-popular TV western HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. Although they were more than 25 years older than when they began their film careers, Moe and Larry had aged fairly well (it helps that they were never very good looking to begin with). DeRita's had neither Curly's lovable zaniness or Shemp's comedic skills, but his resemblance to Curly at least gave the team the right physical balance. This new kinder, gentler and more parent-friendly version of the Three Stooges, though a far cry from the team's glory days, still provided some enjoyable kid's entertainment. I was five years old when HAVE ROCKET, WILL TRAVEL was released and it is among my earliest moviegoing memories.

In their new movie the Stooges play janitors who are accidentally blasted into space in a rocket. They end up on Venus where they meet a talking unicorn, a flame shooting giant spider, featuring footage shot for Universal's TARANTULA, and an artificial super intelligence who captures the trio, shrinks them to mouse size then creates his own set of robot Stooges. All of this was pretty cool stuff for a blossoming young Three Stooges and fantasti-film fan. If the music during the spider scene sounds familiar, it should. It's from the 1955 Ray Harryhausen classic IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA.