THE CURSE OF THE FLY (1965)

DIRECTED by Don Sharp.

SCREENPLAY by Harry Spalding based on the short story "The Fly" by George Langelaan.

STARRING  - Brian Donlevy as Henri Delambre,  George Baker as Martin Delambre,  Carole Gray as Patricia Stanley,  Burt Kwouk as Tai,  Yvette Rees as Wan,  Michael Graham as Albert Delambre,  Mary Manson as Judith Delambre,  Charles Carson as Inspector Charas,  Jeremy Wilkins as Inspector Ronet.

PLOT - Martin Delambre, grandson of Andre Delambre, is driving his car one night when he encounters a scantily clad woman running from something. Martin takes the woman, whose name is Patricia, under his wing. Martin provides Patricia with shelter and the two fall in love and quickly marry.

The young lovers are both holding secrets from one another. Patricia has escaped from a mental asylum (it was this act of escape that caused her to be out in the woods only partially clothed the night she and Martin met). Martin's secret is that he and his father, Henri, are conducting experiments into teleportation that where started decades ago by Andre Delambre. The teleportation experiments are now at the point where people can be transported to the other side of the planet - from Canada (where Martin and his father are based) to London (where Henri's other son Albert operates the teleportation recieving station). However there have been mishaps to get to this point - two lab technicians and Martin's first wife, Judy, have all gone through the process and become mutated and insane. These unfortunates are locked in the stables at Henri's mansion, a tragic secret.

Martin and Henri are also suffering from genetic damage caused by genes inherited from Andre Delambre's earlier transformation into a fly. They both age at an advanced rate (aping the common housefly's short lifespan) and both men need to regularly inject an anti-ageing serum to stay young.

Martin takes his new bride to meet his father at the mansion and soon Patricia finds herself dragged into the web of intrigue and lies that lie at the heart of the Delambre mansion...

DIALOUGE  - Albert - "You're not God, you're not even human. You murdered those men and you made me a murderer too."

PERFORMANCES  - The Curse Of The Fly may be the third entry in the Fly trilogy but it plays fast and loose with the continuity of the previous two movies. This is particularly evident with the character of Henri Delambre (Brian Donlevy). Henri is the son of Andre Delambre from the original movie. As we already know from watching the previous films Andre did have a son...but his name was Phillipe. So, are Henri and Phillipe one and the same ? Yes...no..possibly...they might as well be. It's a mess. Henri is never actually called Henri on screen (the two Delambre brothers just refer to him as "Father" throughout the film), he's only ever called Henri on the end credits. So, if you want to imagine him as Phillipe whilst watching the trilogy then you can if it makes it easier, that's certainly how I thought of him whilst watching the film. There are also other wtf moments when it comes to continuity in this film, so the naming/renaming of a character is really the least of our worries. Maybe Phillipe just changed his name to Henri by deed poll...

Phillipe/Henri has lost a lot of his scruples by this point. He's become so obsessed with completing his father's work that he's lost sight of his morals along the way. He's become much closer to being the typical, amoral mad scientist stereotype that the previous two films avoided. It's this ethical debate that underpins most of the film's narrative and to be honest its handled pretty well, Donlevy gives a good performance of a man who has lost his way but still believes that what he's doing is absolutely right. A pragmatist to the bitter end.

This theme also extends to the character of Martin Delambre (George Baker). Martin shares his father's scientific ambition and whilst he is a bit more humanitarian in his approach, he does tend to turn a blind eye towards some of his father's more dodgy practices. Basically, Martin is an enabler - he's constantly stoking his father's ego by telling him how brilliant he his, how his work is going to benefit mankind and how proud his late father Andre would be if he could see him now. The irony is that Andre would have been horrified and for good reason...

The other Delambre son - Albert (Michael Graham) - occupys the polar opposite position in the moral argument. Albert has grown tired of his father's fanaticism. He's disillusioned with it all and just wants to break away from the cycle of obsession that has consumed three generations of his family. If Martin is the devil on his father's shoulder, then Albert is the angel. Eventually, disgusted by his father's actions, Albert takes it upon himself to stop his father. Both Baker and Graham play the roles of the opposing brothers very well and you can see and understand the points that both characters are trying to make. Where you personally sit on the debate is entirely up to you but both characters ask the audience the question - do the ends justify the means ?

Continuing the tradition of having a strong female character established in the first movie (but missed out in the second film), we have Carole Gray as Patricia Stanley/Delambre. Patricia has secrets of her own, being an escaped mental patient. I'm not sure that her background has much relevance to the overall story other than to justify a few shots of Gray running around in her bra and panties in the film's opening scene, I suppose that you could argue the point is that the "mad" person turns out to be saner than a housefull of supposedly rational scientists but really it doesn't add much to the story.

Despite this nonsense, Gray does put in a solid performance. She becomes our eyes and ears as we navigate our way through this madhouse of scientific horrors and eventually she becomes the character the audience roots for. We want to see Patricia at least get herself out of this situation even if nobody else does.

A quick word has to be made about two of the supporting characters. The Chinese couple Tai (Burt Kwouk) and Wan (Yvette Rees) who act as servants to the Delambre family. Tai and Wan...did you see what they did there ?...oh dear...

I'm not going to spend entire paragraphs banging on about cultural and racial stereotyping, the 1960's was a different time, it is what it is. The thing that gets me is why go to the trouble of casting an actor of Chinese descent (Kwouk) to play a shock horror, ACTUAL Chinese person and then cast a white person with "Oriental" eye makeup to play the other Chinese character...

Yvette Rees looks NOTHING remotely like a Chinese person. It's rubbish enough on its own but casting her alongside someone who is Chinese only serves to draw even more attention to it. Couldn't they have at least asked Bert Kwouk if he knew any Chinese actresses that he could have recommended for the role...

Bert Kwouk, of course, was the go-to actor to play highly stereotypical Chinese roles in the 60's and 70's. He's best known for the role of Cato in the Pink Panther movies and has also portrayed many ''inscrutable'' Chinese villains in several 60's spy movies. Kwouk is actually from Lancashire which makes the stereotyped roles that he played throughout his career seem even more ridiculous.

SFX - There are no fly/human hybrids in this movie, despite it being part of the fly series. Instead we get normal humans who have been disfigured by teleportation mishaps. We see Martin's first wife Judith who looks like one half of her face has been melted, she also has a disfigured hand...

We then get this guy who looks like a professional wrestler with a skull-like empty eye socket...

He's basically the "muscle" of the three mutants and he causes the most trouble when he briefly escapes from his cell.

We then see this character...

Its hard to tell the nature of his particular mutation as he's only onscreen for a few seconds. He appears to be painfully thin and just gibbers and twitches in an insect like manner. He's the closest thing we get to a "fly creature" in this movie and he's memorably creepy in his own small way.

We also get to see Martin in his "aged form" which to be honest, just looks like somebody poured a load of porridge over George Baker's face and left it to dry...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - We get Carole Gray in her underwear for no reason whatsoever. Seriously, If you where breaking out of a psychiatric ward in the dead of night wouldn't you at least remember to get dressed first ?  If nothing else, running around semi-naked is going to draw attention to yourself which is the last thing you want when you're going on the run.

There's not much violence, Martin has a punch up with one of the mutants at one point. We also get to see the direct result of a teleporter mishap when three bodies get fused together into a pulsating mass of flesh, but its only onscreen very briefly.

RATING  - The Curse Of The Fly is usually not mentioned in the same breath as its two prequels. Its something of a forgotten film. For many years it went unreleased on home media, recieving neither a VHS or DVD release. It wasn't until 2007 that it finally saw the light of day when it was included on a DVD boxset with the two other films. In short, The Curse Of The Fly is the unloved ginger stepchild of the series.

Yet, it's not actually a bad little film at all. It's got a creepy, moody atmosphere. It's a lot more gothic horror in it's approach than the first two films.  It tells an interesting story with interesting characters and its more thoughtful style is closer to that of the original film than the monster on the rampage hijinks of the second movie.

Yes, it plays havock with the series continuity, but you have to remember this film was released in the days before you could rewatch a film as many times as you wanted in the comfort of your own home. For the audience at the time it would have been six years since they saw the previous film in the series, so thier memories would have been very vague regarding the finer points of the series internal continuity. People just didn't get as hung up about that kind of thing back then.

I'd say that The Curse Of The Fly is actually a better sequal than Return Of The Fly. It attempts to be something fresh and new, it doesn't entirely hit the spot but at least it tries and that has to be applauded.

4 mutated mishaps out of 5.

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