Introduction

For an introduction to the concept of 61 Days of Halloween, as well as a list of previously featured titles, please go here.

The Curse of the Fly (1965)

One thing that becomes clear when your are viewing a series of films in hindsight is when the death knell rang. When you’re in the midst of things occurring extemporaneously, it can be easy to be hopeful and want a course correction that may not necessarily be better than just abandoning ship.

Now, a lay-off in a series is not always a bad thing. A contemporary example would be that the Paranormal Activity series just skipped its first year since the series debuted, and will return in the early part of 2014. However, with the prior film (still being wildly successful in my mind) being six years prior, the changing climate of the nation as the ’60s progressed; a tale like The Fly had to change and wasn’t necessarily going to work.

So in this The Curse of the Fly there is no fly so to speak, the curse is a euphemism. However, the decks are also virtually scrubbed of any connections to the prior to films only bringing in a very old Inspector Charas to fill in blanks. However, the characters who are brought in don’t contribute in a great way: the colleagues in London add a conscience, the servants in the Delambre add an unfortunate racial stereotype (as well as whitewashing) that seems extraneous even for that kind of thing; the love interest distracts from building the new Delambre generation. A generation that’s building the myth of the series by not being as far from the first incident as one may think at first. Or is it? That was murky too.

All this splits focus, however, there’s also the fact that the fly element is removed and what the threat is, is deformity as attempts of transatlantic teleportation are seriously disfiguring test subjects.

There’s less spectacle, less character, less drama, less suspense, less everything in this film such that the end, not only of this installment, but of the original series is a sweet relief. The mythology of this series is great and could easily be picked up and updated again, maybe even in a truly Quebecois version, but sadly this is an unfortunate final chapter to the original series.