A few years back I did a review of the original The Fly (linky). In that review I expressed my astonishment when I discovered that the original film was in color and, indeed, a completely different film than I had expected. I'd grown up thinking the color version was the sequel to a much older black and white film. THAT film, as I'm sure you've guessed, was The Return of the Fly - a much cheaper sequel green-lit when the original had done much better at the box office than expected.
It's weird to come at this film realizing that it's a sequel, as it's inferior in most every way to the original. Not that sequels are always better than the original - I think the opposite is most often the case - but I generally expect them to at least look like they were made after the original!
 |
| "Don't worry, you'll forget all about this. And grow up in black and white!" |
Still, I have fond childhood memories of this movie and I tend to place it in a group with 50's sci-fi monster movies like Them! and Tarantula, movies I love and look forward to watching again and again. So let's see if this one holds up as well.
 |
| I was going to make a joke about holding things up... |
The Medium
Starz again. I had fewer streaming issues this time around, but they still occured. It was nice that Starz had a few classic horror movies, though - I feel like they're hard to come by on streaming services.
The Movie
The Return of the Fly is shot in black and white (though still in Cinemascope), has only one returning cast member (Vincent Price), and eschews the slow burn mystery for something more like a thriller or film-noir crime picture. Fox appears to have done everything it could to get out a sequel quickly, including use of existing sets from the first film. (There's a scene in Andre Delambre's lab in which his message to his wife - including the shaky "I love you" - is still visible on the chalkboard in the background. It's particularly poignant as the scene takes place after the funeral of Helene.)
Despite having been made on the cheap - roughly half the budget of the original - Return didn't skimp in one important area, the presence of Vincent Price. The first two Fly films (he declined to return for the third) really launched him into the horror genre and the films he made directly after this are among the ones he's most famous for. His part in Return is slightly beefed up from the original and he appears in more scenes. His Francois Delambre is still pretty restrained, with only a few of the extravagant mannerisms that would make him so memorable in later films.
 |
| Chewing books more than scenery. |
Young Phillipe from the first film is all grown up now, and in the aftermath of his mother's death presses his uncle Francois for the real story about what happened to his father. Francois actually tells him, which seems like a bad idea. Phillipe is already pursuing his father's research, however, and all the story does is make him more determined to follow in his father's footsteps. Sans the unfortunate fly-head thing, of course. Soon the young scientist is in the basement of his inherited house, working on 'disintegration and reintegration' with a fellow scientist, Alan Hines. After a brief bout of blackmail Francois joins them.
 |
| Who would ever think Vincent Price's character would be the least villainous in this scene? |
These early laboratory scenes are great and remind me of Universal Frankenstein films - all flashing lights, electrical noises and fancy equipment. It's all 50's tech, of course - with reel-to-reel computer tapes, blocky light sequences and even dark glasses that look like those used for viewing nuclear bomb tests - but it's still got that 'mad science' feel to it. Francois even gets to voice the classic "there are some things man is not meant to know" line, just so we know what kind of film we're watching.
Phillipe scoffs at this, as any good scientist should Still, Francois is right on this. There are some things man is not meant to know. What a human being looks like with hamster hands and feet is one of those things.
 |
| There's a part of your inner calm you won't get back. |
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we have a number of scenes with increasingly successful experiments in... I'm just going to say teleportation, because disintegration/reintegration is just too clumsy. The three men even get as far as putting objects and animals into a suspended state by starting the disintegration and not finishing the second part of the process. At one point they do this to a hamster...
Frankenstein's message may very well be that "man should not play at being God." The Return of the Fly's message seems to be closer to "do some damn background checks on key employees." Alan, you see, is a dirty rotten thief and is planning on selling the secret of teleportation to the highest bidder. (For some reason he's doing this via the middleman of a local mortician, but who am I to judge?) When a policeman surprises Alan stealing the plans Alan overpowers the man and temporarily 'hides' him in the teleportation machine using the same 'start the process, don't immediately finish it' system they'd used on the hamster earlier.
You can imagine how this goes. This is actually the most horrifying bit in the film. You wouldn't imagine that a man with the hands and feet of a hamster would be as disturbing as it is. The hamster with the hands of a man isn't conducive to calm nerves either. Luckily they're both disposed of fairly quickly.
 |
| Not well, but quickly. |
Phillipe, being no dope (except for the whole 'doing the experiments that destroyed my family' thing) figures out what Alan is up to and confronts him. Okay, scratch that 'not a dope' thing. Alan knocks out Phillipe and stuffs him into one of the teleportation tubes. Then, because Alan is nothing if not an absolute dick, he puts a fly in the same tube. (He knows Phillipe is deathly afraid of flies, though not why.) Then uses the same suspended disintegration trick to hide Phillip. And the fly. If you've been wondering how they were going to somehow get someone to wear a giant fly head again, there's your answer.
 |
| Human dickishness instead of staggering coincidence? Yeah, I buy it. |
When Phillipe is reintegrated he comes through as a half fly creature, of course. Then he escapes and goes on a rampage. The fly head design isn't as subtle this time around and is obviously heavy. I say obviously because every time the actor runs or turns quickly he's forced to brace the front of the head so it doesn't topple off his shoulders. It's unfortunately hilarious.
 |
| As is this. |
Phillipe-fly takes his revenge (even on the mortician, who he didn't even know was involved), Francois and a detective try and find him (and his fly-Phillipe version) and there's a somewhat sloppy happy ending. (I really wanted a giant fly body with Phillipe's head on it, myself.) It's all pretty standard monster-movie stuff. That's not to say it's bad - it's a pretty fun monster movie - it's just not at the same level as its predecessor.
The Bottom Line
While not quite the classic horror of the first film, Return of the Fly is slightly above other paint-by-number monster movies of the era. It's better than the film it was paired with - The Alligator People - for instance. Points awarded for managing a (semi) believable reason for getting someone to be half-human, half-fly again. You can never overestimate the human ability to be a jerk.
No comments:
Post a Comment