Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Forgotten Sequels: Curse of the Fly

I loved flies so much that I decided to do another review. Amongst film sequels, this one is right up there with Ben in the forgotten column. It is...
This one needs a little lead-in as well. The original Fly movie is about a scientist who accidentally teleports with a fly in the chamber. His death is tragic, but the details untold to his son. This leads in to Return of the Fly, where the son meets the same fate. Put a sign on the door or something, people! I give you all of that, even though it helps very little here. Ha!
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The film begins with a woman escaping a sanitarium and running around town. So does she become a fly or something? She meets up with a young man, who falls in love with her. Desperate to protect her, he marries her and takes her to the family estate. In hindsight, this is a bad idea.
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His brother lives there and has been experimenting with similar technology. His work, however, has lead to a barn full of Dr. Moreau-style monsters that resemble the large beast in The Brain That Wouldn't Die more than they do humans. It's never quite clear how this is happening though, but just go with it people!
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Right now you're thinking 'why is this a fly sequel' and 'why does this guy answer his own questions aloud?' The latter is because I'm crazy, but the first question is answered thusly: they are descendants. The characters are the grandsons of the original scientist, although this movie is not set in the future like it should be. Time is relative here.
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The uncle comes back into the picture, having teleported in from Quebec. He stirs up trouble, wary of her interference after he has had so much. Of course, this movie exists as a series of unknown issues. They don't know that the lady is crazy and she doesn't know that her husband has some screwed up DNA. The movie gets pretty strange near the end, finally introducing the mutants, fusing two of them together and ending with tragic family death. You don't get the same giant fly head creature this time, but, what you get is still strange. Not quite dinosaur/human/fly strange though.
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Honestly, this film is not all that bad. It is not as good as The Fly or as entertaining in a camp way as The Return of the Fly. It is closer in tone to 1986's The Fly than anything. Ultimately, it is more of an homage to your cliched 'mad scientist makes a monster that is clearly not Adam and is killed by it' films that littered the 1930s - 1950s. Should this really be a Fly movie? Not really. It may actually stand better on its own, since it would not be compared to either original films and not have built-in story expectations. If you like weird, black-and-white movies, you may want to check this out. Fox lovingly-released the original trilogy a year or so ago.
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No more insects. Instead, by popular demand, an old standard comes back. Stay tuned...

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