General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Curse of the Fly

The Curse of the Fly is a 1965 British black-and-white science fiction horror film directed by Don Sharp, the third and final entry in the original Fly trilogy that began with The Fly (1958) and Return of the Fly (1959), and the only one of the three made in the United Kingdom.¹ Produced by Robert L. Lippert and Jack Parsons for Lippert Films and presented by Twentieth Century-Fox, it was written by Harry Spalding from characters created by George Langelaan and stars Brian Donlevy, George Baker, and Carole Gray.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	1965; 86 minutes; black and white; CinemaScope 2.35:1; mono sound¹
Place in series	Third of the original Fly trilogy, after The Fly (1958) and Return of the Fly (1959); the only one produced in the UK¹
Key creatives	Director Don Sharp; writer Harry Spalding; producer Robert L. Lippert; cinematographer Basil Emmott; composer Bert Shefter¹
Principal cast	Brian Donlevy (Henri Delambre), George Baker (Martin Delambre), Carole Gray (Patricia Stanley), Michael Graham (Albert Delambre)¹
Departure from the series	Contains no fly monster; the horror comes from deformed survivors of failed teleportation experiments²
Budget	Made in England for less than $100,000³
Reception	15% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (3 reviews); 5.1/10 on IMDb from about 2,800 users⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Patricia Stanley (Carole Gray), a former concert pianist, escapes from the Fournier Mental Hospital and is picked up at night by motorist Martin Delambre (George Baker). The two keep their secrets from each other, fall in love, and marry.⁴^•⁷ At the Delambre home in Quebec, Patricia meets Martin's father Henri (Brian Donlevy), an eccentric scientist, and discovers evidence of the family's teleportation experiments and their grisly results.⁴

Martin, his father Henri, and Martin's London-based brother Albert (Michael Graham) are the third generation of Delambres involved in teleporting experiments.⁷ Martin suffers a strange malady in which he doubles over in pain and shows signs of rapidly aging, holding the transformation off with injections.⁷^•⁸ The title refers to a hereditary element: grandfather Delambre got himself crossed with a fly while being disintegrated, and his descendants suffer from a fly's short life span.¹ Martin's first wife Judith (Mary Manson) and other assistants have become monsters through failed transmissions, kept locked in outbuildings on the grounds.⁸^•⁹ When Patricia discovers the mutated remains of failed experiments, Martin and Henri try to convince her she is seeing things.¹⁰ In the climax, Henri teleports to London without knowing that Judith had earlier been sent through but never reintegrated; Albert has destroyed the machine on his end, so Henri and Judith are lost in transit, and Martin decomposes into a skeleton before an arriving inspector.¹¹

Production

The first two Fly films were shot on Fox's lot in Beverly Hills, but Curse of the Fly was produced in England for very little money, less than $100,000, and stylistically looks nothing like its predecessors.³ It was made at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, with Basil Emmott as director of photography, Bert Shefter composing the music, Harry White as art director, and Harold Fletcher handling special effects makeup.¹ The British Board of Film Censors classified the film on 1 January 1965 at 86 minutes and required cuts as part of the classification process; the 2006 home entertainment version was passed at 82 minutes 31 seconds.⁶ According to IMDb, the UK cinema version was cut to reduce a shot of two previously teleported victims inside a glass cabinet, and the 2006 DVD is uncut.⁵

Departure from the series

Unlike the first two films, Curse of the Fly dispenses with the title monster altogether, focusing instead on the dangers of teleportation and on a character study that one reviewer compared to Jane Eyre.² Screenwriter Harry Spalding came up with a plot dealing with the potential dangers of teleportation systems instead of repeating the same lab accident and human/fly monster story.¹⁰ The film also exists as a direct sequel to the original 1958 film rather than to Return of the Fly, offering a different ending to the original as its launchpad.¹² The franchise then lay dormant for over twenty years until David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of the original.¹³

Reception and reappraisal

Contemporary and later critical opinion has been divided. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 15% Tomatometer from three critics; Alan Jones of Radio Times gave it 2/5, finding Don Sharp's talent for shock effects lost amid stiff acting, slow pacing, and cheap production values, while Dennis Schwartz graded it B- with the verdict "Never is exciting."⁴ Schwartz nonetheless noted interesting touches, especially the opening scene, and a nicely created eerie atmosphere.⁷ The Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry states that the critical consensus that this is the worst of the three films probably needs revision, crediting Sharp's occasionally visually powerful direction and the touch of failed matter transmission experiments kept in garden outhouses.⁹ David Pirie claimed the film as one of Don Sharp's minor masterpieces in A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema 1946-1972 (1973), citing the scene in which Carole Gray finds the mutant remains of Martin's former wife playing the piano.¹⁰ On IMDb the film rates 5.1/10 from about 2,800 users.⁵

The film has been collected on home video, most notably in Scream Factory's five-disc 2019 Blu-ray The Fly Collection, which includes a new audio commentary with author and film historian Steve Haberman and filmmaker and film historian Constantine Nasr.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026