I’ve just seen The Fly this past weekend and boy I had great fun revisiting this classic, now newly available with its two follow-ups, Return of the Fly and Curse of the Fly. Of course, it’s incredibly corny now and quite ridiculous, but I understand how this must have felt for a 1958 audience eager for thrills and scientific mumbo-jumbo. Some scenes of pathos just seem to still work, even in all this craziness. Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall were already seasoned performers, but the weight of the movie entirely lands on the beautiful shoulders of Patricia Owens, as the bewildered wife. If her character didn’t get our sympathy right away, the film would have never worked.

Born in Golden, British Colombia, Canada, on January 17th, 1925, Patricia followed her family in 1933 when they all moved to England. It was ten years later that the gorgeous redhead made her film debut in the British production Miss London Ltd., a musical. For the following years, she acted in increasingly larger movie parts until the time she was spotted in the mid-fifties by a 20th Century Fox executive as she was doing theater work. This resulted in a screen test and a contract with the studio. Patricia moved to Hollywood and was busy right away, having four film projects in 1957, including Sayonara alongside Marlon Brando.

The next year, she got the role that would make her an immortal icon, that of Helene Delambre in The Fly, concerned housewife of a scientist trying to make his teleportation machine work. Let’s just say that there are complications. The scene where the husband is unmasked is still a horror movie classic, as when can share the mutated creature’s point of view in observing his unfortunate hysterical wife. Patricia was then mostly seen on television series and B-westerns, her last appearance being in 1968 for a Lassie episode. It seems that she was married three times. She passed away on August 31, 2000 in California, an interesting talent waiting to be rediscovered.