Editorials
[Throwback Review] My First Time With ‘Return of the Fly’!
The following is a part of a series exploring Vincent Price films that have eluded me throughout the years. My goal is to see every horror Price film and explore it further. I hope to inspire you all to check out these films if you haven’t seen them or revisit them if you have. Thank you for reading!
You’d think the most unsettling aspect of Return of the Fly would have been yet another insectoid monstrosity but as it turned out, it was a guinea pig. The film opens on a rain-soaked funeral with Francois Delambre (Vincent Price) and his nephew Philippe mourning the loss of Philippe’s mother and Francois’s unrequited love 15 years after the events of the first film (which technically makes it 1973 but we’ll let the aesthetics slide).
Here passes from this earth Helen Delambre, widow of my brother, Andre, who I loved deeply, hopelessly. She was destroyed in the end by dreadful memories, a recollection of horrors that did not dim as the years went on but grew monstrously… – Francois Delambre
Philippe, played here by 50s hottie Brett Halsey, is determined to discover what secrets his family has been holding back from him. He has vague recollection and an almost PTSD reaction to flies but can’t wrap his head around the missing memories of his past. After needling his uncle, he finally learns the grim truth of his father’s demise and his mother’s madness.
Against Francois’s wishes, he decides to pursue his father’s work and perfect it so nothing like his family’s tragedy can happen again. With the aid of his partner, and all around sleaze, Ronald Holmes (David Frankham) he rebuilds his father’s work and even convinces Uncle Francois to join in. Well, that’s not entirely true he really just threatens to bankrupt the family biz if Francois doesn’t agree to assist.
Everything is peachy keen until Philippe’s greasy partner decides he is going to steal the blueprints and make off with all the fame and glory for himself (fortune and glory!) with the help of a local mortician/con-man. When an intruding journalist catches him in the act the machine goes awry transforming the journalist into a Guinea pig/human hybrid. Say what you will about old monster movies, some of them really got it right when it came unnerving its audience.
As you may suspect from the title of the film, Philippe is transformed into a hideous fly creature, far more frightening and hideous than his father before him, while trying to subdue Ronald. Will Philippe succumb to the same demise as his father? Will Ronald make off with the blueprints? Watch it your damn self! Conveniently on YouTube I might add.
Return of the Fly, in many ways, is a superior film to its predecessor. For one, and I can probably attribute this to the glorious Scream! Factory release, it’s much prettier to look at. Cinemascope does wonders and black and white suits me just fine, especially when the transfer is almost spotless.
But looks aside, the story is much more engrossing than the first. Andre, though very tragic, always lacked an intimate connection with me. While his transformation and struggle in the lab occurs behind closed doors we get a much more personal view at Philippe’s trials and tribulations which lead to his ultimate downfall.
And speaking of his transformation, the animal and insect mashups are far more grotesque and disturbing. Philippe’s fly design is much more other-worldly, the head is larger as well as the fly talon that is often used to strangle (well it’s the 50s, monsters still strangle people to death) his victims. But where his father turned almost completely fly-brained, Philippe manages to keep it together as best as a non-verbal fly creature can. Lest we can’t forget the other half of this equation, the fly with the human head. Remember how in the first film they actually just painted a real fly’s head white to signify it as Andre? Well, now we actually get Philippe’s head superimposed onto the fly body which is basically a nightmare all in itself.
The only real tragedy in Return of the Fly is the lack of Vincent Price. Well, lack of Vincent Price as we know him. The Fly films always placed him as a supporting character, but I would have enjoyed a “crazy with grief” performance from him here. Perhaps that was one of the things he had enjoyed from the first draft but was eventually cut out. Whatever the story may have been I kept finding myself longing for more screen time for Price (which has nothing to do with my weird undying love for him…I swear…)
Return of the Fly is one of those rare sequels that holds up, and in this writer’s opinion, improves greatly on the first film. I have a ton of admiration for the first film and I’ll never not love it, but Return of the Fly turned it up a notch and for that I applaud it. Evidently there is a third film in the franchise called Curse of the Fly (1965) directed by Don Sharp of Hammer fame, namely Christopher Lee films such as Rasputin the Mad Monk and The Brides of Fu Man Chu. It’s only loosely related to the first two films and should really be viewed away from the others.
Sure, some of the film is flawed, the most glaring being that his original lab was in the basement of the house in The Fly but was moved to the foundry where Andre was pressed to death. But hey, it was the 50s and shit happens. I highly recommend you check this one out if you haven’t already. I would wait until Fall really starts to settle in, though, this flick has a great atmosphere for the Halloween season vibe.
And one last thing before I go, The Return of the Fly churned out some pretty rad posters and if I didn’t find flies totally disgusting I’d have them all! Check ‘em out below!
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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