Director: Don Sharp
Writer: Harry Spalding
Stars: Brian Donlevy, George Baker, Carole Gray
Run Time:1 Hour, 26 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/3iuTSMx
Synopsis
A window shatters, and a woman in her underwear escapes into the night. She runs through the woods as the credits roll.
Marty Delambre stops the car, throws her a sweater, and promises to give her a lift. He steals some clothes off a clothesline for her to wear. He gives her some money and gets her a hotel room. He calls home, and we see a teleportation lab. His servant calls London on the radio, and we see a duplicate of the lab there as well.
They’ve been continuing the experiments with transporters, and we’re introduced to Henri, who has some strange scars on his body, some kind of side effect of a previous mistake.
Meanwhile, Martin proposes to the mysterious girl, who is called Patricia. We learn that Patricia had a nervous breakdown and was committed to an institution. She was well on her way to recovery when she escaped and ran away. Martin seems to have some kind of strange medical affliction as well. Could that also be from teleportation? What are these side-effects?
We soon learn. Martin has to take some kind of injection, and his face is all disfigured and horrible. He’s fine the next morning. They get married.
The police are tracking down Patricia, and they learn about Martin. Martin returns home with some equipment and also his new wife. His father, Henri, is going to get deported because he entered London without a passport. They don’t believe that he teleported in, so he needs to teleport back home before they come for him.
They load Henri into the machine and power it up on both ends. He teleports without any problems, but he mentions that he has radioactivity burns from a previous failure. Martin explains about Patricia, and Henri thinks getting married is a terrible idea– what if she finds out?
Inspector Ronet wants to talk to Inspector Charas, and he knows about the Delambre family and their history with flies. Patricia and Henri hit it off, and she plays piano for him. The music upsets the mutated prisoners they have locked up in little cells in the barn. One of them scratches the servant woman Wan. The police and the psychologist come to the house looking for Patricia. The Delambre family gets rid of them quickly, but in the meantime, Patricia discovers the cells outside. She opens the window and sees what’s inside. Martin says they are experimental animals.
Martin has another attack of whatever’s wrong with him, but it doesn’t surprise Henri. Henri explains, “Neither one of us can afford to be careless, you know that. This marriage is forcing our hands, we can’t keep working in secret much longer.”
Ronet finally talks to Charas, and Charas is surprised, since Martin is already married to Judith. We’ve already heard that Judith is one of the failed experiments out in the cages. Charas tells what happened in the first two films to Ronet. He calls it “The Curse of the Fly.”
Patricia soon sees Judith playing the piano; she seems normal except that half her face looks melted off. Patricia sees her, screams, and faints. Martin tells her it was all a dream. Everyone denies that it happened, and Patricia doesn’t like being told she’s crazy. Marty wants to tell her the truth, but Henri says it’s not too late to save everything they’ve worked for.
Henri and Martin start transporting the “experimental animals” over to London for permanent disposal. They want to get rid of the evidence before Patricia finds out the truth. One of the mutants attacks Martin, but Henri beats it to death with his cane. They teleport over two of the mutants, and Alan on the other end, reintegrates them both at once. The thing that comes through survives, but it’s a horrible blob. Alan takes an axe to it.
Martin explains about Judith to Patricia. “One of our experiments went wrong.” Meanwhile, Wan lets Judith out and tells her that Patricia is in her bedroom. It seems Wan wants Judith to kill Patricia. Judith chases Patricia down the isolated hallways. The other servant, Tai, kills Judith and rescues Wan. Tai knows how the machine works, and he uses it to make Judith disappear.
Henri and Martin want to escape through the machine to London. Alan refuses to cooperate, but they send Henri though anyway. None of them know that Judith had been sent through but never re-integrated. We know that Henri will merge with Judith upon his successful teleportation, but it turns out Alan has already destroyed the machine on his end, so that’ll never happen; Henry and Judith are simply lost in the air somewhere.
Marty is ready to send Patricia through to London, but he has another attack and reverts to his monstrous true form. The inspector comes in at just the wrong time and sees Martin, who has completely decomposed into a skeleton.
Commentary
This borrows a lot of ideas from the first two films, but is very dissimilar to the first two. For one, there’s no Fly Monster in this one. It’s more about a family that just won’t give up even when that’s the smartest thing to do. It’s got a lot more suspense and mystery than either of the first two films. There’s also a lot to think about in this one; a lot of what if they… possibilities arise from the plot here.
It was a little long, and the ending felt drawn out, but it wasn’t bad for a third movie in the series.