Curse of the Fly

Alright, now we are going to look at the third in the “The Fly trilogy,” “Curse of the Fly,” released in 1965. Dennis Schwartz opened his review up by saying, “Tasmanian-born B-film director Don Sharp ("Hennessy"/"Kiss of the Vampire"/"The Face of Fu Manchu") helms the odd third leg in "The Fly" series, after The Fly and Return of the Fly. It's scripted by Harry Spalding, and is based on George Langelaan's short story.” The producer is Robert L. Lippert, which is a modest effort, and has some interesting touches (especially notable is the opening segment) and a nicely created supernatural atmosphere, but overall the film is disappointing as it never is exciting – just too much talk over pseudo-science.

Pat Stanley, played by Carole Grey, a former concert pianist, breaks a window and escapes from the Fournier Mental Hospital, scantily clad. Passing nighttime motorist Martin Delambre, played by George Baker, gives her a ride to Montreal and doesn’t interrogate her. Even though he sets her up for a week in his hotel they fall in love and marry, as they agree to keep their secrets to themselves. Back at his solitude Quebec lab headquarters, Martin keeps to himself that his secret is that he’s hit with a strange problem that causes him at times to increase the pain while flashing signs of fast aging and that his mad scientist father Henri Delambre (Brian Donlevy), him and his London-based brother Albert (Michael Graham) are third generation of Delmabres involved in teleporting experiments that are wrong and have resulted in a compartment of horror. The mad scientists keep Martin’s pianist first wife Judith, played by Mary Manson, and two former lab assistants locked away in the stables after unfortunate results from their teleportation experiments left them deformed as mutants (part human and part fly). Henri believes he has finally mastered the way to break down solid matter and teleport it somewhere else, and is anxious to use his new equipment before police Inspector Ronet, played by Jeremy Wilkins, searching for Pat, gets a search warrant to the ground.

Things go wrong when Pat catches on that something strange is going on here, and Henri in his rush uses the teleporter on himself without first checking if Albert – the only family member who is normal as he did not become heir to his grandfather’s ‘fly curse’ genes – has hooked up the recombining machine part. A distressed Albert has instead smashed the machine, no longer willing to participate in these brutal experiments. It results in Henri’s atoms scattered like ashes. Pat is set to suffer the same fate, but Martin, who is not as crazy as his dad, rescues her from the machine but in his rescue effort finds himself aging fast and he immediately dies. Wouldn’t you know it; Pat is cured of her mental illness. Schwartz speculates, “It seems Pat suffered from an oppressive parental upbringing and now with no such authority figure around she's as sane as anyone at Hammer studio.”

The film’s funniest line has Brian Donlevy saying, “We’re scientists, we have to do things we hate.” It’s original moments like that which give it some fun value that make it tolerable despite its weak script, lazy acting and cheap makeup.

For curiosity case, I would say check it out, but I wouldn’t highly recommend it, even if you didn’t like “Return of the Fly.” The movie was produced in England with no Vincent Price and no fly, but how many times could that happen anyway? It is an interesting movie that I would say watch, but if you don’t like, I understand. I’m not a fan of the movie myself, but I do agree that it had an interesting story.

Now I believe that I mentioned that they did remake “The Fly” in the 80s, which happens to be the one that everyone remembers and not the original 50s movie. How is that? Stay tuned tomorrow in the continuation of “Fly-a-thon” to find out in this year’s “Halloween Month.”