Main Cast: Moe Howard, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Joe DeRita, Jay Sheffield, Joan Freeman
Release Year: 1963
Country: US
Run Time: 94 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
This slapstick comedy is a hilarious spoof on "Around The World In 80 Days." The grandson of the celebrated Phinius Fogg makes a bet with his cohorts at the London Explorers Club that he can complete the journey. Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe are the dedicated servants who accompany the explorer along with his pretty girlfriend Amelia (Joan Freeman). The group must earn money to live on along the way as the wager was made with the provision young Fogg bring no money. Curly Joe fights a Sumo wrestler in Japan for prize money. In a hilarious scene, the Stooges observe a Japanese trio of Stooges acting like their American counterparts and walk away shaking their heads in disbelief over the slapstick behavior. The group races against time to complete the journey and collect on the bet. Longtime Stooge associate Emil Sitka appears as a butler in the exclusive blue blooded club. Directed by Moe's son-in-law Norman Maurer, this may be the funniest of all the Stooges films from the 1960s. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
Walter Burke - Loty Filch; Peter Forster - Vickers Cavendish; Maurice Dallimore - Crotchet; Richard Devon - Maharajah; Anthony Eustrel - Kandu; Robert Kino - Bill; Murray Alper - Gus; Don Lamond - Bill; Jack Greening - McPherson; Emil Sitka - Butler; Ramsay Hill - Gatesby; Ron Whelan - Harry; Phil Arnold - Referee; Moe Howard - Moe; Iau Kea - Itchi Kitchi; Colin Campbell - Willoughy; Michael St. Clair - 1st Mate
Credit
Don Ament - Art Director, Grace Kuhn - Costume Designer, Ted Tetrick - Costume Designer, Norman Maurer - Director, Edwin H. Bryant - Editor, Paul Dunlap - Composer (Music Score), Joe de Bella - Makeup, Irving Lippman - Cinematographer, Norman Maurer - Producer, James Crowe - Set Designer, Richard Albain - Special Effects, Elwood Ullman - Screenwriter
The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze was the fifth feature film made by the Three Stooges after their 1959 resurgence in popularity. By this time, the trio consisted of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita. Directed by Howard's son-in-law Norman Maurer, The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze was loosely based on the Jules Verne classic Around the World in Eighty Days.
Phileas Fogg III, great-grandson of the original Phileas Fogg, accepts a bet to duplicate his great-grandfather's famous trip around the world in response to a challenge made by Randolph Stuart III, the descendant of the original Fogg's nemesis. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, "Stuart" is the infamous con man Vicker Cavendish who made the bet in order to cover up his robbing the bank of England by framing Fogg for the crime.
With him in this plot is his weaselly Cockney co-conspirator Filch (Walter Burke). This makes for a dangerous journey for Fogg and his servants (the Stooges) and Amelia Carter, whom they rescue from thugs during a train ride. On the way, they also: Try to steal a cream pie from the galley of a Turkey-bound British cargo ship (and poke the cook in his fat behind with a gaff in the process); watch an elaborate Indian dance at a maharajah's palace, where blind-as-a-bat Curly Joe also regales the maharajah and the viceroy with knife throwing—until his disguise falls off; get captured in China by the Chinese Army, and survive Communist brainwashing in Shanghai with their interrogators turning into Chinese Stooge clones (Moe tells the Chinese general, "No brainee to washee!"). The disgusted Chinese set them adrift in a small boat; use Curly Joe's music-provoked strength to cadge food, clothes, and a trip to San Francisco from the manager of the monstrous sumo Itchy Kitchy after a demonstration in a park in Tokyo; stow away in a moving van, supposedly headed for New York. Of course, they are caught, and arrested in Canada by the British inspector (the Stooges and Amelia fake British accents so the inspector will arrest them too).
Back in London, they cross paths again with the two conspirators, again disguised as police—and armed. Of course, the Stooges win out, and, as with the original Phileas Fogg, his descendant miscalculated by one day and still has a chance. Curly Joe gets behind the wheel of the Bobby paddy wagon and speeds across London, and young Fogg wins the bet—crashing into the Reformer's Club with two seconds to spare.
Trivia
The gag of Curly-Joe becoming combative when he hears "Pop Goes the Weasel" was recycled from one of the earliest (1934) Stooges shorts, Punch Drunks.
The "mahahara" routine was recycled from an earlier 1946 Stooge short, Three Little Pirates.
