A 21-Buzz Salute, Continued...

In Return of the Fly, the son of the mad scientist in the first movie decides to follow in daddy's footsteps -- only to end up with a fly-head, a fly-arm AND a fly-leg. His fly-head is also twice as big as his daddy's was. Another fellow gets his atoms spliced with those of a guinea pig, which leads to an absurdly gruesome scene in which a cruel scientist stomps on a guinea pig with human hands. While the weirdness of that image is certainly intriguing... and titillating in a goofy sort of way... it also keeps it from being truly frightening.

Of the three Fly movies, Curse of the Fly is by far the most horrific. The Fly-guys in the first and second installments are interesting, but today's viewers aren't going to lose any sleep over them. The supposedly scary Delambre fly-heads look like hairy pinatas -- I keep expecting blindfolded kids with long sticks to come out and bash them open for all the candy inside.

Curse is the scariest of the three because it explores additional creepy possibilities for teleportation fiascos. No one gets merged with any critters in Curse, but there is an especially nauseating moment when two PEOPLE get their atoms smooshed together, resulting in a brief but nasty glimpse of a huge, misshapen mass of pulsing limbs and flab. Curse also features some victims of botched teleportation experiments who basically look like wax figures who have been stored too close to a raging furnace.

In the old Star Trek TV series, Scotty used matter-teleportation technology to beam down entire search parties from the Enterprise to the surfaces of alien planets. Scotty never had any of those atom-smooshing problems -- which is a pity, really. It would've been pretty funny to see him beam down Captain Kirk and Spock and then run into some smooshing difficulties, resulting in a hideous Kirk/Spock composite-monstrosity writhing on the planet's surface. "Ach! I hate when that happens!" Scotty would surely cry.

Curse also has the most complex and absorbing storyline of the three movies. When a pretty young woman who has escaped from an asylum falls in love with a Delambre, we do feel lots of sympathy for this poor, beleaguered beauty. Talk about going from the frying pan to the fire! This gal couldn't catch a break with a butterfly net. Curse probably would've been more popular if it had actually featured a Fly-guy -- but, it's such a good movie, it really doesn't need one.

Curse of the Fly is one of those rare cases where the third movie in a horror series is the best. Usually, the third one is a real howler. Remember Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D? Or the third Amityville movie? But then, all the Amityville sequels were pretty lame -- that one's not really a fair example!

So from now on, whenever you think of classic movie monsters, remember the Delambre family of Fly-guys. But I do hasten to add this warning: I wouldn't suggest that you make yourself a papier-mache Fly-head as a Halloween costume. Kids might try to break it open with long sticks.

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