Remember Philippe, the little son of Andre Delambre from the first Fly movie? Well he grew up to be Brett Halsey and yes, he’s mucking around with his father’s teleportation experiments, under the supervision of his uncle, Vincent Price. Halsey’s new assistant turns out to be a dirty spy who sucker punches him into the teleporter along with a fly, turning him into another hideous half man/half fly monster. Since the teleporter has some serious issues with gigantism, this fly guy has a humongous fly head. The Fly, Jr. runs around town to get revenge on the sniveling spies who double crossed him before being transported back to his old self (selves) for the unlikely happy ending.

Unlike it’s predecessor, Return was shot on the cheap in black and white, but was still filmed in Cinemascope for some odd reason. (As was it’s co-feature, The Alligator People.) Odd aesthetic choice or greedy studio penny pinching? You be the judge. The low budget shows sometimes, but while the original was an unforgettable horror classic, this one is a highly entertaining B movie.

The Fly head for this movie is way too big, but it’s still pretty memorable. Even better though, is the scene in which a guy gets stuck in the teleporter with a guinea pig and emerges with giant paws! The subsequent shot of the guinea pig running around on human hands has to be seen to be believed.

Director Edward Bernds directed a lot of great 50’s B movies like Queen of Outer Space, World Without End, and High School Hellcats, and would later go on to direct several Three Stooges movies, but this might be his best. Halsey and Price (who would later star in Twice Told Tales together) give fine performances, with Price lending the movie some seriously needed gravitas.

Andre Delambre (David “Al” Hedison) is an obsessive scientist/family man who stays in his basement laboratory at all hours of the day trying to perfect his matter teleportation machine. He uses himself as a human guinea pig, but since a common housefly was in the machine with him, the machine mixes up his atoms and Delambre ends up with a fly head and hand! The tiny fly (now sporting his face and hand) flies off and he sends his concerned wife (Patricia Owens) on a frenzied search to find it. When the fly’s killer instincts begin to overcome Delambre, he urges his wife to stick his head under a giant hydraulic press, which quickly becomes the biggest fly swatter in human history. The police inspector (Herbert Marshall) wants to send her to a looney bin after she tells him the whole story, but after he sees the tiny fly with Delambre’s head trapped in a web being eaten by a spider screaming “Hellllp Meeee!”, he quickly changes his tune.

The Fly was a rare big budget studio horror movie that perfectly blended a somber chamber drama with science fiction and bloodcurdling horror. It was shot in Cinemascope, which was unheard of for a “B Movie”, but the lavish production and excellent performances is what catapults The Fly into it’s richly deserved classic status.

Vincent Price has a small but memorable role as Andre’s brother who appears in the film’s framing device. His scenes may more or less just be one big stalling tactic, but Price never fails to command your interest. The other performances, especially by Hedison and Owens are just as good, as it’s their relationship that’s really the core of the movie, and her final desperate act is one of the most intense forms of unconditional love ever seen in a motion picture.

While the film is deliberately paced and slow in some spots, it features two of the most startling images ever seen in a horror movie: The unmasking of the fly, along with it’s wall eyed POV shot of Owens screaming and the tiny fly screaming “Help Me”. These scenes still pack quite a punch today, almost 50 years later, as they did when the film was first released.

Director Kurt (Rocketship X-M) Neumann does a superb job in every respect, but unfortunately died shortly after the film was released. The screenplay was by a young James Clavell (who would later go on to write Shogun), based on the popular short story (which originally appeared in Playboy) by George Langelaan. The stellar fly head make-up was by Ben Nye, who later did the effects for the underrated The Alligator People the next year.

The wild success of this film led to two sequels (only one featuring Price and an actual Fly monster), myriads of cheap knock-offs (my favorite being The Wasp Woman), and much later a highly intelligent (and ultra gory) remake by David Cronenberg, which was even better.

This isn’t in the same league as the original, but the great effects and a good performance by Eric Stoltz make it worth a look.

Stoltz plays the son of Jeff Goldblum from the first movie. He grows at an accelerated rate and appears fully grown when he’s only five years old. He starts messing around with pops’ old equipment and you guessed it; turns himself into another gigantic fly. This time however, he turns into a large cocoon, before emerging as a six armed mutant fly-man.

John Getz returns from the first film, but he gives a terrible performance and has some truly awful dialogue. (“Your father bugged me!”) Daphne (Spaceballs) Zuniga is okay as the love interest, but Stoltz’s performance is what makes the movie. If it wasn’t for Stoltz, (used to acting under tons of latex after Mask), or the excellent special effects (a head crushing elevator scene and a melting face are among the highlights), this wouldn’t be worth two shits.

First time director Chris Walas also provided the special effects (he also did the effects for the original) and future directors Mick (Sleepwalkers) Garris and Frank (The Shawshank Redemption) Darabont co-scripted. Lee Richardson and a mutant dog co-star.

This remake of the 1958 Vincent Price classic is David Cronenberg’s masterpiece. It’s shocking and gross, but it’s also an emotionally riveting parable about watching someone you love deteriorate right in front of your eyes. It also happens to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

Jeff Goldblum stars as Seth Brundle, a brilliant and eccentric scientist who creates teleportation pods and falls in love with reporter Geena Davis. On his maiden voyage inside the machine, a fly finds its way into the telepod and he and the fly merge at an atomic level. This means he starts losing body parts (which he saves and puts in his medicine cabinet) and becomes more and more insect like. In the grossout finale, Goldblum pukes acid all over John Getz’s arm and leg before Davis blows him away with a shotgun. Other gloppy highlights include a wrist snapping arm wrestling scene and a nightmare involving a maggot baby. (This scene also features Cronenberg as a gynecologist.)

But deep inside the gore and slime lies the center of the movie, which is the relationship between Goldblum and Davis. Goldblum is excellent and convincingly shows a range of emotions while buried beneath the pounds of latex, and Davis is good at showing love, sympathy and hysteria. You really have to admire the way she stands by her man even after he’s being a slimy glopola man.

Chris Walas did the excellent Oscar winning effects and went on to direct the so-so sequel, The Fly 2.

Third in the original Fly movies offers no half-man/half-flies, but interesting mutants and failed experiments. The third generation of the Delambre family is still meddling with the teleportation pods. Brian (The Creeping Unknown) Donlevy is the controlling father of his two scientist sons and is badly scarred from a teleportation accident. His son (George Baker) marries a beautiful concert pianist (Carole Gray) who escaped from a mental institution in her underwear. They are perfectly happy together, until she finds his first wife (with a mutated face) and two mutated assistants locked up in the stables, and she begins losing her grip on her sanity. When the two assistants are transported together, they become a tangled, mutated mess. The other son can’t take it anymore so he smashes the pod which is unfortunate for his father, because he gets lost in limbo between the two pods. Good effects, memorable characters, (especially Gray), and some real scares make up for no flies (except for a photo from Return of the Fly) and makes for an entertaining film. Directed by Don (The Kiss of the Vampire) Sharp.