It's funny how faulty one's memory can be about a film seen for the first time almost fifty years ago. With today's viewing, I'm pleased to honor it with my vote for best horror film made in color that should have been done in black and white. That's how I remember it, along with Vincent Price's other classics of the era - 1959's "The Bat" and "House on Haunted Hill". Those WERE in glorious B&W and I couldn't think of them in any other way.
Say, did you catch that great, almost subliminal fly buzzing in the opening credits set to music? That was a neat touch setting the stage for the horror to follow. And horror there was, although interspersed with comic elements that oozed their way through, unintentional though they might have been. Like when Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) gets hysterical at the housekeeper (Kathleen Freeman) and demands - "I told you to find that fly"! There's also the double entendre moment near the end when Francois (Price) demands of Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall) a way to redeem his sister-in-law of murder. His response - "There is, show me the fly"!
No need to get into the nuts and bolts of the story here, enough reviewers on this board have done that already. However I haven't read about anyone making the connection between Andre Delambre's (Al/David Hedison) teleportation machine and the beam me up chamber 'Star Trek' would utilize less than a decade later. I don't recall any reconstructed cellular mishaps on that show, although I could be wrong about that. Now there would have been a story.
So you have that great fly head making up the creature costume, along with the claw-arm that goes into histrionic fits whenever Helene is around. Goes to show what can be done with the power of suggestion over huge and expensive special effects. The multiple view image of Helen through the fly eyes was also a neat touch. Makes me wonder though how a fly ever manages to find anything when an object is all over the place. Have to think about that.
If you can't get enough of pictures like these, I've already mentioned a couple of Vincent Price's classics earlier. For a more direct knock off of "The Fly", you only need look again to the following year, 1959, when Roger Corman did a nifty little creature feature called "The Wasp Woman", proving once again that beauty is only skin deep. Had the producers gone the extra mile, they could have staged a wedding film between The Fly and The Wasp Woman. The sequels alone would have kept them busy as bees.
Say, did you catch that great, almost subliminal fly buzzing in the opening credits set to music? That was a neat touch setting the stage for the horror to follow. And horror there was, although interspersed with comic elements that oozed their way through, unintentional though they might have been. Like when Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) gets hysterical at the housekeeper (Kathleen Freeman) and demands - "I told you to find that fly"! There's also the double entendre moment near the end when Francois (Price) demands of Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall) a way to redeem his sister-in-law of murder. His response - "There is, show me the fly"!
No need to get into the nuts and bolts of the story here, enough reviewers on this board have done that already. However I haven't read about anyone making the connection between Andre Delambre's (Al/David Hedison) teleportation machine and the beam me up chamber 'Star Trek' would utilize less than a decade later. I don't recall any reconstructed cellular mishaps on that show, although I could be wrong about that. Now there would have been a story.
So you have that great fly head making up the creature costume, along with the claw-arm that goes into histrionic fits whenever Helene is around. Goes to show what can be done with the power of suggestion over huge and expensive special effects. The multiple view image of Helen through the fly eyes was also a neat touch. Makes me wonder though how a fly ever manages to find anything when an object is all over the place. Have to think about that.
If you can't get enough of pictures like these, I've already mentioned a couple of Vincent Price's classics earlier. For a more direct knock off of "The Fly", you only need look again to the following year, 1959, when Roger Corman did a nifty little creature feature called "The Wasp Woman", proving once again that beauty is only skin deep. Had the producers gone the extra mile, they could have staged a wedding film between The Fly and The Wasp Woman. The sequels alone would have kept them busy as bees.