Director: Edward Bernds
Writers: Edward Bernds, George Langelaan
Stars: Vincent Price, Brett Halsey, David Frankham
Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/3iuTSMx
Synopsis
We begin at Helene’s funeral. She never really did recover from the events of the first film, even though fifteen years have passed. Philippe has grown up, and he wants to do more transportation research, but Francois doesn’t want to give him the money. He refuses to support Philippe’s work. He wants to protect Philippe from re-creating his father’s work. Philippe backs Francois into a corner by saying he’ll sell his half of his father’s business, and Francois agrees to give him more money.
Philippe’s assistant, Alan, aka Ronny, goes to see Max, a crime boss. Ronny needs someone to sell the invention after he steals it.
Philippe, now called Phil, has completed his work, and the matter-disintegrator / re-integrator is finally complete. This time he demonstrates it to Alan and Francois; they transport an ashtray perfectly. When they try a Guinea Pig, it comes out at gigantic size. They fix that problem, then they try disintegrating another Guinea Pig, then they decide to wait until tomorrow to bring it back. We see that Phil is deathly afraid of flies.
Alan/Ronny sneaks back into the lab that night after everyone has left and starts copying notes. A policeman has followed him into the lab. Ronny slugs the cop and disposes of the body in the easiest way possible– the disintegrator. He uses the machine to bring back the body later, but when he does it, the cop’s corpse now has Guinea Pig paws, and the Guinea Pig has human hands. Oops!
He calls Max to come help him get rid of the cop’s car, so they drive it off a cliff into the river. Phil comes into the lab, and he knows something happened, since he can see the Guinea Pig blood on the floor where Ronny stomped it to death. Ronny makes up a story, but Phil doesn’t believe it. They fight, and Ronny knocks out Phil. Naturally, Ronny hides him in the transporter and makes him vanish. Ronny sees a fly in the room and puts one in the chamber with Phil just because Phil hates flies.
Francois arrives and comes in just as Ronny runs out the back way and steals Francois’ car. Ronny shoots Francois. They patch him up before he goes down to the lab and activates the machine again. When they bring Phil back, he’s got the head and arm of a fly. Just like Dad! The Fly-Man runs away and Francois passes out from his bullet wound. One of the policemen pursues Phil through the woods. The police inspector sees and hears a fly with a human head calling for help. The police give orders to shoot on sight. Francois wakes up, but will only talk to Inspector Beacham. Beacham was Charas’ assistant in the first film.
Beacham eventually shows up at the hospital, and he believes everything Francois has to say. Francois is sure they can reverse it, but he reminds Beacham to find the white fly.
Meanwhile, Max is waiting for Ronny to show up with the plans for the machine. The Fly-Man attacks him and kills him.
Beacham finds the white-headed fly easily enough, but they can’t find the big humanoid fly. Ronny, however, does find Max’s body. The big fly finds him as well– and kills him.
The fly returns home that night, and goes to see Cecile, his girlfriend. She screams and the monster passes out. Beacham comes in and drags the creature to the lab. They put the monster and the human-headed fly back in the machine and press the button. Will it repair Phil?
Yes. He looks normal and makes a full recovery. A happy ending!
Commentary
We immediately see that this had a lower budget than the original, as the first thing I noticed was that we have reverted to black and white. It makes sense that they introduced a criminal element in this film; after the disaster that happened in the first film, they’d never make that mistake again– not without help anyway.
How did Phil-Fly even know that Max existed? He went there and killed him even before Ronny got there.
The fly mask is bigger, and at least in my opinion, better-looking. They used the same props, equipment, and sets from the first film, which is nice. We get a lot less setup and far more screen time for the monster in this one. The story itself is extremely predictable and similar to many other monster films, but it moves fast and is reasonably well-acted.