Y’know, it always warms my heart when a bad movie has the absolute stones to end their movie with a caption saying something to the effect of ‘IS THIS THE END?!’ implying that a sequel is all but guarenteed. Its a mindset that brings with it such a sense of reassurance about its own future, that I cant help but crack a grin when I look into it and find that either a sequel DID happen, but was a ‘clean slate’ restart BECAUSE that initial film was so bad…or that no sequel ever materialised, as is the case with ‘Curse of the Fly’.

This is the final entry in the original ‘Fly’ series. and It just…really did absolutely nothing for me. This entry is only very tenuously connected to the first two films, and whoever wrote/directed/managed continuity for this series really didnt do their homework at all, because this entry is set far FAR into the future and introduces Henri and Martin Delambri…who are these guys? Well; Henri is Andre (the original fly pod creators) OTHER child, who we have LITERALLY not heard of or seen up until this point. and Martin is Henris son. We’re getting quite far removed from the original events.

This film was entirely shot in England, and only really exists because Producers Robert L. Lippert and Jack Parsons had some extra cash in their pockets, a dormant franchise they’d kind of wanted to pull out of storage and a dozen or so actors working on other projects for them, who had free time to spare…So they got Don Sharp in, gave him ZERO steerage beyong telling him they wanted him to make a ‘Fly’ movie, and when he asked for more information to help give him SOME steerage on what the hell they ACTUALLY wanted. They allegedly just slapped the guy on the back and said ‘You handle it kid.’

And…this is the result; an 86 minute garble of a movie that really feels less like a ‘Fly’ film, and more like a badly orchestrated generic ‘Monsters crash the Pyjama party’ type feature that…even at only 86 minutes, long outstays its welcome…THERE ISNT EVEN A FLY MAN IN THIS MOVIE…WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING CHRIST IS GOING ONE?!!?

So; the film opens with a woman escaping in her underware from a mental hospital, where shes found on the roadside by a chap named Martin. Martin tries to coax the woman to go with him, and at first shes reluctant, but eventually agrees because…shes almost naked, its autumn in the UK…and a girls gotta eat.

And apparently, thats all it takes to start a relationship in 60s England. Because only a scene or two later, the womans revealed her name is Patricia and her and Martin are having a nice expensive dinner at a hotel, and Martins offering to pay for her to have a room.

And its here really that the ‘fly’ element of this movie is revealed almost entirely…Martin is the grandson of Andre, who built the original fly pod, and him and his dad Henri have been working on ‘perfecting’ the transportation pod, and its basically almost ready to go! they’ve demonstrated that they are able to transport people between the US and London, and once they’ve found a way to stabilize the process it should be good for domestic shipping! What issues still need to be worked out? Well…it turns out that regular use of the transport pods can cause irriversable cellular degredation…basically necrosis but over your whole body…Oh! and also, if ANY kind of living matter gets into the pod with the traveller, even bacteria…the traveller has a high risk of permanently transforming into a creature beyond the comprehension of our wildest horrors…So y’know…no big.

Its also revealed at this point that Henri has suffered some degree of degredation, with his back being horribly scarred and deformed. and Martin…SOMEHOW, has a recessive genetic mutation from his grandfather, which means if he doesnt get regular injections, he slowly starts to turn into a fly man…Which really only borks the continuity even harder because it means that Helene from the first movie had to have boinked the fly man because…theres no other way Martin could have inhereted fly genes…but the BIGGEST crime this film commits (and I am SAVING you here from an hour and 26 of cinematic loitering) he DOESNT EVEN TURN INTO A FLY MAN…AND NO FLY MAN/MEN ARE IN THIS MOVIE.

Anyway; the bulk of the film is basically Martin and Patricias blossoming romance, continued experimentations with the transfer pods, and a subplot in which Burt Kwouk and a woman in ‘yellow face’ play housekeepers to Henri who have a stable full of deformed mutant transfer pod failures in the back yard, that they feed scraps to, and who inevitably eventually break out to cause mahem.

The first half of the film is more romance driven with science fiction elements, and the back end is basically a walkthrough of a haunted house, as Patricia slowly discovers for herself the horrors Henri and Martin have created, and the untold risks they’re working with in trying to perfect teleportation…and somehow between the racism, lack of fly people and low budget fawning…they STILL manage to make a film that fails to really do anything it sets out to achieve.

This entry in ‘The Fly’ series was, for a time notoriously hard to get a hold of, only recieving a DVD release (its first release since its theatrical run) as late in the day as 2007. and at first you may be inclined to think this was an overlooked entry that may hide hidden treasure…but you’d be wrong, it likely didnt get a release, because it just isnt really all that interesting or good.

The scripts painfully slow, we spend way too much time bogged down in technical jargon, arguments between Henri, Martin and his team, the romance plot with Patricia and Martin, and a weird B-plot in which Patricia lies to Martin, claiming she was in the mental hospital looking after an elderly writer, only for it to IMMEDIATELY be debunked about 10 minutes after its said when a woman turns up claiming she was committed after a mental breakdown caused by the death of her parents…and that plot point, goes. NOWHERE.

I suppose its here to try and give the audience the sense that this is a fragile woman who shouldnt be shacking up with a scientist who’s slowly turning into a fly unless he gets his injections, who has a stable filled with mutations…But the two plot points are never really connected. Or rather, the way Patricia as a character reacts when she finds out everything thats been going on, is no different to how anyone would probably react if they found out what was going on…In fact, at multiple points through the film, they make it VERY clear to stress that she’s ‘Much better now…’ So I dont even really know WHY they bothered in the first place.

the tone isnt all that clear, the other films were campy horror efforts with a sci fi twist, this? this seems to WANT to be a romance, it kind of wants to be a creature feature, but doesnt seem to know how best to approach it, the sci fi elements feel a bit laboured. I dont know what it really wants to do, it cant seem to definitively pick a lane honestly.

The core cast are kind of well defined. But they arnt really as likeable or interesting as the first two films, and it feels like nowhere near enough care was given to them in terms of getting to what their character arcs and needs were… Not to mention that the continuity issues really dont help either. It probably would have been better to have made this a clean break, and had it just been about two scientists who stumble on Andres work and try to make a go of it, rather than tying it back into the original films, because all that does is really muddy the timelines. whether its finding out Andre had hidden children, Helene bonked the fly man, or that, becuase they didnt check the continuity hard enough, a still they claim is a photo of fly man Andre, is in fact a grown up Fly Man ‘Phillipe’…which creates EVEN MORE continuity issues.

The dialogues naff, the act structurings wonky, it really does feel like a production that was made, simply because there were scraps and a bit of cash left over from other films…and while there are a couple of okay moments VERY heavily spaced out…its ultimately not enough to keep my attention fully on the movie.

The direction too is overly safe, while it is nice to see the special effects make a return after the last films overreliance on cutaways and stock footage, it again really isnt enough to save what is really a quite flat, low effort, ‘safe’ production. theres no zeal here, nothing that made me sit up and take notice. it borrows elements of the original ‘Invisible man’ and elements of ‘The Tingler’ in places, but its a film made in 1964/65 that feels like a film made 10 years prior. The original ‘Fly’ movie, for its time felt ahead of the curve and unique. This by contras somehow feels less developed and more regressive than the original.

Same goes for the cine, its all flat lighting, wides and mid shots, no real experimentation with the cine, the angling. Theres minimal B-roll, the whole thing just feels SO dead visually. The way this film is shot makes us as the audience feel like observers to whats going on, rather than thrusting us into the action. everythings kept at arms distance, and when you shoot a whole movie that way, it makes it VERY hard for the audience to really engage in the piece. Not to mention the edit is a bit rough around the edges with some shots running for way longer than they should an some cuts happening too soon or too late.

Performance wise? theres just…nothing really here to get excited about. Both Carol Grey and George Baker as Patricia and Martin are jsut about fine…and thats the BEST performance in this thing…When your BEST is ‘just about fine’ its not looking good…and what we have here is a supporting cast that just, feel so not bothered to be there. Even Burt Kwouk, who I was particularly excited to see in the opening titles, gets a quite minimal role, and doesnt really get much on screen presence beyond running from room to room and the occasional, quiet line delivery. Its a very uninspiring range of performances here with very low energy and almost no enthusiasm or naturalism for the lines being delivered.

I still cant quite get over the fact this films called ‘Curse of the Fly’ and theres no Fly man in it. This is basically just a hokey romance film with a monster movie duct taped to it. its slow, uninteresting, dry at times and absolutely is NOT what I come to a movie like this for. Only watch this one if your a completist and want to see the trilogy…Otherwise give it a wide birth and just stick with the first 2 fly films and the Cronenberg remake. This ones really not worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/curse-of-the-fly/