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movie review of The Outlaws is Coming (1965) starring the Three Stooges - Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Joe DeRita

The last of the Three Stooges‘ feature films, The Outlaws is Coming is in some ways better, and in other ways worse, than their other feature length films. There are several positive things about it—The Outlaws is Coming serves as a good parody of the Western movie, when three inept photographers (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita) are sent west with their editor, Kenneth Cabot (played by Adam West, a year before his huge success as TV’s Batman), working for a conservation magazine and trying to find out who is behind the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo.

The answer is the villain of the picture, Rance Roden, aided by his right-hand man, Trigger Mortis (love that name!), who are slaughtering the buffalo in order to coerce the hungry Indians (now called Native Americans, but I played Cowboys and Indians as a child ... but I digress) to attack the cavalry, and give his criminal cabal free regin. Rance has the beautiful Annie Oakley (Nancy Kovack) working in his saloon, but she’s actually working against him, using her sharpshooting skills to cover for Cabot’s total ineptness with a gun—very similar to the Don Knotts film The Shakiest Gun in the West or Bob Hope in Paleface.

The movie has many very funny moments, such as when Larry and Curly Joe read the newsprint off of Moe’s face after a mishap with a printing press, Curly Joe tries to enter through a saloon door with a cigar, trying to rescue Moe from a glue-y chair, Moe, Larry and Curly sneak into the room of the various gunslingers hired by Rance, in order to pour glue into their holsters and give Cabot a fighting chance—and Larry and Curly Joe go into the wrong room, surrounded by (sleeping) dancing girls. It’s a very funny routine, especially with the running joke about Wild Bill Hickock. There are other funny moments as well, such as Henry Gibson (of TV’s Laugh-In) as the son of the Indian Chief, who serves as a 1960’s mod translator, the gunfight, the Three Stooges “reforming” the gunslingers, and the pie fight at the climax.

It’s a funny movie, and worth watching, not only because it’s the Three Stooges’ last feature film. What’s the negative? At this point in their careers, the Stooges were no longer young men, and it was starting to show—Moe, for example, was 67 years old.

Product description of The Outlaws is Coming, courtesy of Amazon.com

The Outlaws is Coming (1965), also known as The Three Stooges Meet the Gunslingers, is a wacky Western in which Larry, Moe and Curly-Joe co-star with Adam West (TV’s “Batman"), Henry Gibson (TV’s “Laugh-In"), longtime Stooge sidekick Emil Sitka and Nancy Kovack (Frankie and Johnny). The Stooges are sent, along with an editor, by a conservationist magazine publisher on the East Coast to investigate a gunslinger who is wiping out the buffalo population in the West in order to turn the Indians against his enemy, the U.S. Cavalry. With a little help from Annie Oakley and an unusual cache of weapons (including cream pies), they are able to dodge the posse’s bullets...and make the West safe for the wild creatures that roam its frontiers.

You may also want to look at the photo gallery for The Outlaws is Coming.

The Three Stooges - The Outlaws is Coming - a gun slingin', rip-roarin' full length feature film

Funny movie quotes from The Outlaws is Coming

Rance Rodent: If anyone tries to stop us, they’re idiots ... dead idiots
[scene cuts to] Moe (Moe Howard): Alright you idiots, hurry up.

Moe (Moe Howard): [talking about the skunk, Elvis] watch out now, he’s dangerous.
Larry (Larry Fine): I don’t trust you, either.

Kenneth Cabot (Adam West): Boys, please, I’m working.
Moe (Moe Howard): That’s all right, Mr. Cabot, you ain’t bothering us!

Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): My all-purpose hunting horn.
Moe (Moe Howard): That looks like an unborn piccolo!

Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): I know the problem—too much pizza in my pizacota.

Larry (Larry Fine): Not me, to Wyoming. It’s full of gunslingers, gila monsters, rattlesnakes, and Indians!
Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): And besides, it’s against our religion. Yeah, we’re devout cowards!

Moe (Moe Howard): You talk like an idiot.
Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): Then you understand me.

Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): There’s only one thing I’d ask for if I had to tangle with that guy!
Larry (Larry Fine): You mean a fair fight?
Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): No, I mean a head start.

Moe (Moe Howard): Tequila ... that sounds like an internal hot foot.

Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): I got it.
Moe (Moe Howard): Every time you got it, I get it.

Moe (Moe Howard): What are they, Blackfeet?
Curly Joe (Curly Joe DeRita): I can’t see their feet, but the rest of them don’t look so clean.

Moe (Moe Howard): We’d rather you hang us from that tree.
Charlie Horse (Henry Gibson): That tree won’t be ready for 60 years!
Moe (Moe Howard): We’ll wait.

Johnny Ringo: [after shooting a telegraph delivery man] That’ll teach ya to interrupt me when I’m swoonin’ the gals!

Trivia for The Outlaws is Coming

Norman Maurer is the son-in-law of Moe Howard. Jeffrey Scott, who plays “Kid,” is Maurer’s son and Moe’s grandson.
This was The Three Stooges’ final completed film as a group. They made one more film together, Kook’s Tour (1970), but the film sat unfinished and unreleased for years due to Larry Fine suffering a stroke before the movie was complete.
The actors who portray the gunslingers were hosts of The Three Stooges television programs in the 1960s. One of them, Don Lamond, was Larry Fine’s son-in-law.
Emil Sitka’s final film appearance with The Three Stooges. A regular in their films for decades, Sitka would actually officially become a Stooge in the early 1970s after Larry Fine was forced to retire, but he never made a movie in this role.
The title “The Outlaws is Coming!” is a joke referring to ‘Alfred Hitchock (I)’’s The Birds (1963) that was promoted with blurb “The Birds is Coming!”

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About the Author

Tom Raymond, aka. Raynbow the Clown, is a professional clown working out of Madison, Wisconsin, and is available for ministry events, conventions and conferences.

Posted by Tom Raymond, aka Raynbow on 10/06 at 05:39 PM
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