We return from our Spanish holiday to cover a British-made sequel to an American film set mostly in Canada. I’m not sure if that makes this a second consecutive international film or not, but I’ve stopped caring already, so don’t bother telling me. Today we’re taking on 1965’s Curse of the Fly.
What we have here is the third in the original The Fly series. The first introduced us to scientist André Delambre, whose development of a functioning teleportation device is ruined when a fly finds its way into the chamber with Delambre, merging their genetic makeups. Fun stuff ensued. The sequel follows Delambre’s son, Phillipe, as he carries on his father’s work, only to wind up in the same situation thanks to some industrial sabotage. Thank goodness for Vincent Price (playing Delambre’s brother). The films aren’t masterpieces, but there’s a lot of classic cheesy goodness to be mined from them, especially the first. If nothing else, the inherent promise of the premise was made all the more obvious when David Cronenberg remade the original, infusing the story with some of the most visually stunning examples of his characteristic body horror shenanigans. (The sequel that followed the remake was pretty much a lackluster as the original’s sequel, by the by.)
In this third outing for the original series, we open inexplicably on a woman escaping from what we find out is a mental institution in her underwear, all done in slow motion. We haven’t gotten past the opening credits, and I’m already wondering where the hell things are going. This woman, Patricia, happens to run into Martin Delambre (whom we find out is the grandson of the original fly-infected scientist), and the two fall in love and marry just as inexplicably as the opening apparently warned. All of this happens before the two find out much about the other: Martin doesn’t know that Patricia’s on the lam from the booby hatch, and Patricia isn’t aware of Martin’s family business, namely the development of an operational transporter. Martin and his crew have indeed gotten the transporter to work, but he’s uneasy about using without more tests, especially since others that have gone through – including his first wife – have come out the other side pretty deformed. And now the police are on the way, spurred on by their search for Patricia.
Return of the Fly was already a step down for the franchise, bringing little of the original’s verve with it, but Curse here is yet another descent. The visuals are a dull monochrome – as though a standard monochrome was somehow filtered through another monochromatic process, draining it of any visual flair – and tend toward the weird in every sense, be it the disfigurements or the oddness of the opening. The acting mostly comprises a set of performances you’d expect from one of the better experiments on MST3K, and it leans even heavier on the cheese than the B-movie story, especially with the love story bits. Everything feels cheap and rushed and devoid of a true desire to continue the story of the original, hence the many deviations in continuity.
At the end of the day, this is one of those ’60s B-flicks that never gets fun or campy enough to be genuinely enjoyable, and it’s far too dull and ho-hum to ever recommend beyond fulfilling the desire to complete the Fly series.
Allusions of Grandeur 