CURSE OF THE FLY

 

Another first-time watch for me. This is the third classic "Fly" movie, after THE FLY and RETURN OF THE FLY, which were made in America in the late 1950s. CURSE OF THE FLY wasn't produced until 1965, and it was made in England. The co-producer was low-budget movie maven Robert Lippert, and the director was the very effective Don Sharp. 

The Delambre family from the first two FLY films is still trying to perfect teleportation...and they're still screwing up. Henri Delambre (Brian Donlevy) and his sons Martin (George Baker) and Albert (Michael Graham) have managed to teleport objects from Quebec to London, but there are several after-effects. Both Henri and Martin have been physically affected by these endeavors, but not as badly as some of the people they have worked with. While driving home one night Martin picks up a beautiful young girl along the roadside named Patricia (Carole Gray). Martin rather quickly falls for Patricia and marries her, then finds out that she has escaped from a mental asylum. After being brought back to the Delambre family manor, Patricia  realizes there are all sorts of strange things going on, while her new in-laws are determined to continue on with their experiments, no matter what the cost. 

CURSE OF THE FLY (that's the title shown on screen) gets the viewer's attention at the start, with Carole Gray, clad only in underwear, wandering around outside at night in slow-motion. The rest of the film doesn't live up to this sequence. It's very talky at times, and the sub-plot of Patricia's mental problems gets in the way of the main story. 

Brian Donlevy looks and sounds very uncomfortable here, and I don't think it was because of the character he was playing. George Baker's Martin isn't defined enough--at times it seems he's going to go against his father's wish to perfect the teleportation process, at other times he seems unstable. Carole Gray gets more to do in CURSE OF THE FLY than she did in ISLAND OF TERROR, and she makes a fetching damsel in distress. Charles Carson plays Inspector Charas, the role that Herbert Marshall played in the original THE FLY. 

The Delambres have a Chinese couple that assists them, played by Bert Kwouk and the decidedly non-Asian Yvette Rees. Rees made a major impression in Don Sharp's WITCHCRAFT, but here she looks silly in her Oriental get-up (she wears as much facial makeup as the victims of the teleportation experiments do). Rees' character has a Mrs. Danvers-like devotion to Martin's first wife, who supposedly disappeared--one figures out very easily what happened to her. 

There's plenty of gooey make-ups on the results of the Delambre's experiments. and Sharp is smart enough not to dwell on them too long. There is one scene involving FX that sticks out--a couple of the "experiments" are transported together from Quebec to London, and they become fused into a writhing, disgusting mass of pulpy flesh. It's a result that's quite disturbing. 

CURSE OF THE FLY feels more like a 1950s sci-fi film than a product of mid-1960s English Gothic. (It was filmed in Cimemascope and black and white.) The travails of Carole Gray, wandering around a manor house in a nightgown while trying to find out what is going on, do not mix very well with the futuristic elements of teleportation. Henri and Martin go on and on about how their invention will help the world, and how "sacrifices" have to be made for the greater good, but you get the feeling these guys would have problems picking the right bus to go across town. 

In the tradition of most classic horror film sequels, CURSE OF THE FLY ignores series continuity. The events of the first film are mentioned, but with a different outcome. Henri is apparently the son of the David Hedison character from THE FLY, but in that film Hedison's boy was named Philippe, and he grew up to become the focus of RETURN OF THE FLY. The events of RETURN OF THE FLY are not referred to here. (What does boggle the mind is a family tree that includes David Hedison, Vincent Price, and Brian Donlevy.) 

At the climax of CURSE OF THE FLY, an on-screen credit asks, "Is This The End?" It was for this series, at least until David Cronenberg remade the original in the 1980s. There wasn't much more one could do with the Fly series, except have people turn into mutants after being teleported over and over again. CURSE OF THE FLY is notable for being an English spin on a American science-fiction franchise, and it is far more diverting than RETURN OF THE FLY. (Oh, one more thing....there are no flies in this movie!!)