Curse of the Fly

Curse of the Fly
Directed by	Don Sharp
Produced by	Robert L. Lippert Jack Parsons
Written by	Harry Spalding
Starring	Brian Donlevy Carole Gray George Baker
Music by	Bert Shefter
Cinematography	Basil Emmott
Editing by	Robert Winter
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	1965 (1965)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Curse of the Fly is the second and final sequel to the 1958 version of The Fly. It was released in 1965, and unlike the other films in the series was produced in England. Directed by Don Sharp. Screenplay by Harry Spalding. Starring Brian Donlevy, George Baker, Carole Gray, Burt Kwouk, Yvette Rees, Michael Graham, Judy Manson, Charles Carson. 86 minutes.

This film was rarely seen for many years, as it was the only entry in the entire Fly film franchise that did not receive a videotape or laserdisc release. It did not receive its home video premiere until 2007, when it was released in a boxed set with the original series of films.

Plot

Martin Delambre (Baker) is driving to Montreal one night when he sees a running young girl in her underwear by the name of Patricia Stanley (Gray). They fall in love and are soon married. However, they both hold secrets: she has recently escaped from a mental asylum; he and his father Henri (Donlevy) are engaged in radical experiments in teleportation, and they have already had horrific consequences. Martin also suffers recessive fly genes which cause him to age rapidly and he needs a serum to keep him young.

In a rambling mansion in rural Quebec, they have successfully teleported people between there and London. However there had been many failures producing horribly disfigured and mad people who are locked up in the stables. Martin's first wife is one of them. The police and keeper of the asylum trace Stanley to the Delambre place where they find out she has married Martin but it comes out that he had a previous wife whom he did not divorce. Inspector Charas, who had investigated Andre Delambre and is now an old man in the hospital, tells the policeman about the Delambre family and their experiments.

As the police begin to close in, a mixture of callousness and madness afflicts the Delambres and people are killed and more monstrosities are produced. The Asian couple (Burt Kwouk and Yvette Rees) who were helping them have had enough and leave. Martin sends Henri to London not knowing the reintegrater has been destroyed and Stanley has had enough and she tries to escape. Martin tries to stop her but starts aging again and he is without his serum so he dies. The police arrive.

The film ends with the words: "Is this the end?"

Backstory

Although a sequel to the The Fly and Return of the Fly, the backstory used for Curse of the Fly does not match the continuity of the first two films. It does, however, build its narrative on elements and characters from those films.

Curse of the Fly centers on Henri and Martin Delambre, identified as the son and grandson of the Andre Delambre character depicted in The Fly. Andre's invention of a teleportation device and subsequent accidental integration with a housefly remain within the backstory. However, his resultant assisted suicide is removed; instead, his son — apparently a different character from the boy Phillipe Delambre depicted in The Fly — was able to put both the altered man and the altered fly back into the teleportation chamber and successfully reverse the integration, as was done with an adult Phillipe in Return of the Fly. The dialogue within Curse of the Fly contains no mention of Phillipe, although a picture shown in the film, which is supposed to be of Andre in his altered form from The Fly, is actually a still photo from Phillipe's transformation in Return of the Fly.

External links

• Curse of the Fly at the Internet Movie Database
• Curse of the Fly at AllRovi