monochromatic CinemaScope can be intoxicating in the right hands. This is not the case here. The real disappointment of this sequel is not its cin- ematography but that it fol- lows a first-rate, intelligent piece of speculative science fiction drama with a monster movie. Originally released on a double-bill with the similarly


dumbed-down THE ALLIGA- TOR PEOPLE, it opens in Montreal with Price’s avuncu- lar François Delambre attend- ing the funeral of beloved sister-in-law Helene with her son Philippe (Brett Halsey), now an adult scientist in his own right. He and his British research assistant Alan Hines (David Frankham) insist that François support them in Philippe’s plan to complete his late father’s research into teleportation, whose initial success is proved by repeat- ing the late Andre Delambre’s initial experiment of tele- porting an ashtray. (There is talk of how the experiment has not caused any transpo- sition, a reference to the re- versed Made in Japan print on the bottom of the ashtray in the first film, but no insert shot of these words is in- cluded to make sense of the dialogue.) Similar lack of at- tention to detail abounds as the storyline grows more com- plicated with the revelation of Alan as an industrial spy and


RETURN OF THE FLY: Brett Halsey’s 7-foot-tall stand-in grabs David Frankham in a headlock.


killer on the lam, in cahoots with a mortician gour- mand named Max (Dan Seymour) whose office is adorned with Ditko-like death masks. Alan, real name Ronnie, is caught by a British officer whom he dispatches by teleporting his brained corpse into the abyss where he is ultimately combined with the unreintegrated molecules of a guinea pig. (The ac- tor, supposedly dead, blinks at 39:48.) When Philippe confronts Alan with his suspicions, he is fought to unconsciousness—Blu-ray clarity making the sub- stitution of the two actors with stuntmen laughably obvious—and deliberately, cruelly teleported in the


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company of a fly, to which species he has previ- ously shown a terrible aversion owing to the trauma of learning his father’s fate. A passing reference to “gigantism” occurring in their experiments explains why Philippe’s reintegration results in a giant-fly- headed hybrid with a pincer-like hand and foot, which he must drag along, Kharis-like. The mon- ster is also of variable heights, being played in some scenes by Halsey’s stunt double (a man of compa- rable height) and in others by Ed Wolff, a towering 7' 4" former circus giant who had also previously played the robot in THE PHANTOM CREEPS (1939)

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