Oct 081965
 
two reels

Beautiful escaped mental patient, Patricia Stanley (Carole Gray), is picked up by Martin (George Baker), a descendent of Andre Delambre, who first created the teleporter.  The two fall in love and marry.  But Patricia knows nothing of his accelerated aging, or the experiments he carries out with his father, Henri (Brian Donlevy), and brother, Albert.  Those experiments have resulted in horrible mutations in human subjects, including Martin’s first wife, who is kept in a cell.

She’s an escapee from a mental institute; he’s a mutant that imprisons his disfigured first wife.  Both are keeping their secrets.  Can these two crazy kids make a go of it?

Six years after the mindless Return of the Fly, we get this creepy horror film that would have worked better without any connection to the previous films, particularly as there is no Fly (I can forgive that as there is no Thin Man in the five sequels to The Thin Man and the Pink Panther gem is missing from a majority of the films that bear that name).  There is a picture of The Fly from the second film, though I’m hard pressed to think when the monster took a moment to pose for publicity photos.

The basic idea is a good one—a mentally unstable but sympathetic girl marrying into a nice family that turns out to be filled with mad scientists.  Directed in a gothic style by James Whale, it would have been powerful.  But this was made for drive-ins, with harsh lighting and cardboard machines.  When we stick with Patricia’s point of view, even the lesser skills of director Don Sharp makes a compelling work.  Her pain and fear are real.  Plus the beginning shot of her breaking out of the asylum, clad only in her underwear and running in slow motion, is beautiful and shows what the film could have been.

But the film doesn’t stay with her.  Instead, suspense is tossed away as we’re given plodding scenes of the Delambres discussing the dangers of teleporting and the need to do it secretly.  I’m lost on why they haven’t gone public and made billions (even a teleporter with problems would be worth a fortune).  Of course they have those mutants to worry about…

As in the previous film, the police work in strange ways.  In this case, they appear to keep a woman sitting on a bare wooden chair in her coat for several days.  Either that, or she keeps popping back (in the same coat), and placing her purse in the same place.  We also have an elderly policeman who sits in bed and explains the film series to anyone who asks.  I could have sworn the half-fly thing was a big secret.  I find all of the police activity in the film hard to believe.

I also find it hard to believe that there wasn’t a single oriental actress in Hollywood who could have played the small supporting role of Wan, the loyal servant.  It’s distracting having this white girl pretend she’s from 1920s film China.

Curse of the Fly is a poorly executed 1950s holdover that has some interesting moments and one well shot scene.

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