Return Of The Fly
Sequels and full fledged “franchising” of horror movies and the characters portrayed therein were nothing new during the golden age of the 1980s. In fact, going back as far as the 1930s, making quick and easy sequels to the horror films of that day were welcomed, preferred, and almost even exclusive to the genre in and of itself. This 1959 release, an almost immediate follow up to the original 1958 version of The Fly, was yet another example of quickly throwing a sequel together while the iron was still hot on the success of the previous entry. Since the original Fly was more of a tragic tale of woe where the unlucky scientist main character (David Hedison) was just so distraught at his seemingly permanent change that he had finally decided to commit suicide (with the help of his wife), here the story takes on the ambition of having some real conflict, complete with a main (human) villain who must be dealt with. The interesting thing here is the parallels between this somewhat slapdash affair and the much later 1989 release The Fly 2 which was the sequel to the Goldblum / Cronenberg Fly movie that depicted Goldblum’s son (Eric Stoltz) continuing his father’s work with teleportation while also having to deal with nefarious types looking to benefit themselves off of their hard work. The other thing about the original 1958 Fly film was in its awfully stagy quality, keeping most of the action (what little there was of it) terribly confined and not having much going on really story wise except for the utter tragedy of it all. Flash forward to this film’s release one year later (or 15 years as per the timeline of events) and the film opens with the funeral of the Hedison character’s widow along with Vincent Price reprising his (good guy) role as Hedison’s grieving brother who explains via voiceover how his sister in law had NEVER recovered mentally from her experiences in losing her husband in such an abominable fashion and now the focus of the family has shifted to Hedison’s grown son Philippe (Brett Halsey) who apparently was never told the full circumstances of his father’s death and is now pouting pretty heavily on the way back from his mother’s funeral, pressuring his Uncle Vincent to spill the beans. Price finally does, even bringing his nephew to the old laboratory (the sets were still standing from the filming 1 year before) and imploring his nephew to not ever consider taking up after his dad or he might suffer the same awful fate. Turns out that Phillippe has also blossomed into being a scientist himself and insists on Uncle Vincent’s blessing to carry on his father’s work, a concession that Price only agrees to after Phillippe threatens to sell off his half of the family business (hence destroying it). The young man reassures his uncle that things will be fine since he won’t be as careless as his father was, but he’s already made his first and most damning major mistake by employing for himself a lab assistant (David Frankham) who is not only a dangerous sociopath using a fake name and accent, but is also a wanted criminal being hunted by the British authorities who already has international buyers lined up for the teleportation device when and if it’s completed provided he gets poor Phillippe out of the way so that he can collect all the profit for himself. And get him out of the way he does (or seems to), locking Phillippe in the teleportation chamber after knocking him out and as an added bonus, catching a buzzing housefly and sticking it in the chamber with him (which is a total coincidence since this same corrupt assistant was never made privy as to the exact details of the death of Philippe’s father). A quick zap of the device and voila! Now Phillippe is stuck with a fly’s head mask as his father was and unlike the old man, is off and running throughout the countryside (making sure to hold the fly mask in place to keep it from falling off) seeking revenge for what has happened as Price endeavors to capture the housefly with Phillippe’s head on it (still screaming “Help me! Help me!”) and work out some means as to manufacture a cure that would see man and fly back in the chamber together so that the process can be reversed. This push towards a happy ending that sees evil being defeated (as Fly 2 managed to do) somewhat invigorates the narrative and the (obviously ridiculous) bits showing the Fly Man running around out in the open, but the most curiously unanswered question here remains as to why this film was shot in black and white whereas the original was made in color (budgetary reasons perhaps?), making for a very stark difference in the entire presentation. Price (as usual) brings class and gravitas to what is arguably his best known good guy role even as he spends large portions of screentime laying around in bed moaning and groaning about his nephew’s plight. The villainous lab assistant when he adopts his “real” persona (including sporting a full on British accent) comes across as being more of a roguish and jovial spy type and his mortician go between / accomplice (Dan Seymour) looks as if he has just won first place in an Al Capone lookalike contest, so watching these two buffoonish baddies receive their just desserts at the hands of the elaborate Fly mask doesn’t quite pack the same punch as seeing Eric Stoltz’s Martin Brundle dispensing fly acid onto his enemies in order to create a melting pot effect that would give anyone pause as THIS Fly seems to specialize in just pinching one’s neck in order to create the result of death. Still, this continued the already revered tradition of horror movies to pile on more sequels in the hopes of piling on more of that money…
5/10