Return of the Fly (1959) Review

Director: Edward Bernds
Stars: Vincent Price, Brett Halsey
Genre: Horror, Science fiction

A follow up to the previous year's film, The Fly, and this was an obvious cash in to try and make a buck. You can read my review of the awesome original, where I discuss what makes it just so great. It will maybe give you a better idea of why this one is such a disappointment.

The film starts off at a funeral, where we learn that the mother from the last film has killed herself because she couldn't live with what she knew. This is what happens in the short story that the series is based on, but I suspect they just couldn't get the actress to come back and do the film.

We follow Philippe, the kid from the first one, who wants to reinvent his father's machine thingy, even though he knows the risks. Vincent Price, returning from the first, warns him not to but he fails to heed his warnings. Glad to see Price back, though his performance wasn't nearly as superb as it was in the first one.

The one scene I thought was kind of cool was when the Fly attacked that fat guy. It was even a little scary.

This film plays out much more like a typical mindless horror flick. They changed the Fly's mask from the last time, making it much more bigger and cheesy looking. Not sure why they did that, the original looked great. I suspect it may have been done in an attempt to make the character more memorable and recognizable. It worked out decently because it added to the camp value and that's about the only value you'll find in this.

The film is kind of noir-ish, which is cool. At certain times it really did feel like film noir. Unfortunately the plot is really uninteresting, I've forgotten most of it already, and there are way too many characters to keep track of. Plus it doesn't help that none of the characters are even vaguely interesting or developed.

Then we get a shitty ending. And that's about it.

Pros:

+Camp value

Cons:

-Confusing and boring plot

-Too many characters

-Bad character development

-Bad ending

As I've said, check out my review of the first one, and stay tuned for reviews of the sequel, Curse of the Fly, and the 1986 remake along with the remake's sequel.

Preceded by: The Fly (1958)
Sequel: Curse of the Fly (1965)
Remake: The Fly (1986), The Fly II

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