Curse Of The Fly

Live And Let Fly

Curse Of The Fly
UK 1965 
Directed by Don Sharp 
20th Century Fox 
Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone B

Six years after Return Of The Fly (reviewed here), the British made their own follow on which, in terms of certain things, doesn’t really make sense and, also, was bound to be a bit of a disappointment. Although, as a film in its own right, I think it’s a much maligned and pretty good, old school ‘comfort horror’ myself.

Two big reasons that I suspect that this one bombed are as follows...

Let’s look at the poster for Curse Of The Fly because it says it all. The tagline reads, “Piece by piece... atom by atom... humans invisibly teleported through time and space - - Re-entering Earth as Half-human Monsters from the 4th Dimension!” Well okay then... if you take that very literally, space becomes just another dimension and so does time saved in travel, I guess. Half-human monsters are present but... yeah, this whole tagline is written in a pretty sensationalist style, it seems to me. This is not quite the film that people were getting.

But to compound that even further... there’s a big picture of a fly head on the poster and, let me tell you that asides from a quick glimpse of a photo from a previous film (and I’ll get to that later too), no flies are in any way present in this movie. So.... if you look at the word curse as meaning more of a legacy of bad luck you might just get away with it... but the audience was expecting a fly-man, thank you very much! 

Okay. so the film has two connecting tissues to the other movies. One is that it’s the next generation of the Delambre family working on a teleportation device between London, England and Montreal, the two main protagonists played by Brian Donlevy (the first movie Quatermass) and George Baker. So it’s the third generation of Delambres... but there are only six years passed between the films’ settings. Yeah, the Math’s doesn’t work out does it?

Plus... the ‘just escaped from a mental asylum’ love interest with a mysterious past, played by Carole Gray, marries the George Baker character within a week of meeting him, not knowing what she’s gotten herself into. By the way, no real revelation (unless I missed it again this time around) is made as to why she was in the asylum in the first place. All we know is that a detective is pursuing her. And as the rest of the story plays out... Baker’s first wife is still alive as a mismatched thing who unfortunately survived an earlier teleport experiment... but, hey, she can still play the piano pretty well! That’s about as much as I want to say about the story. 

Secondly, an ex detective consulted in his hospital bed is the character Inspector Charas, the helpful cop from the first movie. But, since none of the actors wanted to return for this film, he’s instead played here by Charles Carson, wearing handy sunglasses in the hopes that the audience won’t know the difference. But, again, three generations down... he still shouldn’t be looking quite this young. None of the figures are adding up!

However, all that aside... I really liked this film and I absolutely adore the opening credits. Panning in on the mental asylum, we see a window smash out with about three times the amount of glass coming towards the camera (which gives me pause to think that the film might originally have been a prospect to be shot in a 3D process). Then, the rest of the credits sequence comprises of beautifully shot scenes of Carole Gray running towards or past the camera in slow motion, wearing only a bra and panties (my mum identified the correct part of the decade this was made by the model of underwear said lady is wearing in this sequence, I’m proud to say). I love this opening and it’s backed up nicely with Bert Shefter’s quite pretty, piano dominant score for the movie. About which...

Sawtell and Shefter was often seen as a pairing on many genre soundtracks of the day. But the way they were utilised for The Fly franchise is interesting. The Fly (reviewed here) was scored by Paul Sawtell as a solo gig. Then, Return Of The Fly was scored by the familiar pairing of Sawtell and Shefter. And for Curse Of The Fly it’s Bert Shefter going solo. So... yeah... an interesting phenomenon. Can’t think of many composers who quite (even Newton Howard and Zimmer) ended up in this formation. 

And, like I said, I was fine with most of the rest of the movie and, once the initial disappointment about there being no giant fly/humans in it is overcome, it’s a pretty fun B-movie as far as I’m concerned. A fun B-movie with some absolutely breathtaking cinematography. And if you want to see another entertaining sight... this film has the great Burt Kwouk sporting a very out of place moustache. So, yeah, see it for that alone. 

My only other big problem with this is the stupidity of the movie making exactly the same mistake as many books and articles on The Fly franchise have in the past. When Charas is going through the Delambre file of the events of the very first film, he pulls out a photo of The Fly to show the detective. First of all, how would anyone have taken a photo of him like this in the first story when only his wife saw her husband in this state? But secondly... and much more alarmingly... the photo he takes out is not the fly as seen in that first movie (which is never seen without a lab coat) but the much larger headed fly from Return Of The Fly (a story which did not even involve Charas). So this makes absolutely no sense and is a really bad error, as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s me about done on Curse Of The Fly. Like I said, I really enjoyed revisiting it and am happy to watch again at some point in the future. A film perhaps better served with a title which sets up less expectations that it never satisfies but, even so, worth a watch as far as I’m concerned.