Fly Me To The Moon

Year: 1989

Director: Chris Walas

Cast: Eric Stoltz, Daphne Zuniga, Lee Richardson

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The original The Fly may have already gotten two sequels, but Cronenberg's remake was produced in the 80's, so the fact that it also got a follow-up is about as unsurprising at the time as a movie being shot in color. It's just what you did. So here we have The Fly II, released three short years later under the guiding directorial hand of the '86 film's special effects supervisor. So at the very least it was helmed by someone who was literally involved in the  DNA of the franchise.

A very important element when it comes to The Fly.

Weirdly, The Fly II is almost more of a remake of Return of the Fly than The Fly '86 was of the original film. On top of the general concept, it borrows the lead character and the entire plot structure (including the fabulously messy third act and the perfunctory ending). Beyond that, a lot has changed, but I'm happy to see they at least did their homework.

We pick up with Veronica (now played by Saffron Henderson of the same year's Friday the 13th Part VIII) giving birth to the son of Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum, who only appears in the form of deleted scenes from the original as viewed on videotape). Martin looks like a perfectly normal kid, except for the fact that he's a super-genius and ages at a rapid rate, to the point that he looks like an 18-year-old Eric Stoltz by his fifth birthday. He is tapped to continue his father's project of developing a teleportation machine by Dr. Bartok (Lee Richardson), the owner of the scientific facility where he was born and raised.

During his tenure at Bartok Labs, he befriends and falls in love with night shift worker Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga), but unfortunately reaching the age of maturity has also triggered his dormant fly DNA and his slow transformation into an inhuman beast is already well on its way. Will their love withstand his total degradation while he attempts to find a cure, with the help of a cameo-ing John Getz, the only returning cast member?

And will I ever get to the bottom of why I'm weirdly attracted to John Getz? Some questions are better left unanswered.

To be completely honest, The Fly II actually solves some of the problems of Return of the Fly right off the bat. Instead of forcing the lead to go through the exact same failed experiment as his father, it becomes a potent metaphor for a latent disease passed down from a parent. And the love interest this time around isn't some random scullery maid with no lines. She's a scientist too, and while she's still mostly just a damsel in distress, she actually has a part to play in the story here instead of sitting around waiting for flies to creep her out. 

Unfortunately, the plot here is probably the silliest of the entire franchise (and that includes a movie where a man marries a hitchhiker in her underwear). It indulges too much in splashy retro camp, including some hilarious scenes that completely misunderstand how computers work yet again and some truly bizarre dialogue where a casual conversation can somehow lead to a man throwing a champagne bottle at a floor length mirror and everybody just being cool with it. While that's hardly a detraction where I'm sitting (I always like to have me some fun with weird movies), it definitely undercuts the rawness of the horror, which is something this franchise has been reasonably good at retaining even throughout its later entries.

Martin Brundle is relatable enough (except for the scenes that take place when he's a supergenius young boy, which are a grotesque parody of Spielbergian "gee whiz" filmmaking that will rot your teeth out with their saccharine guilelessness), but the trials he goes through are buried under Walas' ravenous need to show you cool, gruesome effects. They're mostly great effects too (minus the Brundlefly's final form, which looks a little too much like a Gremlin for my tastes), with some moments that will make you want to pass the heck out, like a shot of the boy pulling mucus from his mutated elbow. But Cronenberg proved there was a way to combine grossout gags with an actual narrative arc and subtextual thematics. Here, everything in the movie is shunted aside for a third act that is loud, full of admittedly cool deaths, and droningly repetitive in every other aspect.

But the deaths really are coooooooool.

There are two things that are unequivocally great about this film though, which is still pretty solid if a bit shallow. The first is Christopher Young's epic score, which brings back the grandiose orchestral feel of Howard Shore with sweeping bombast. The second is a scene involving a failed experiment on a Golden Retriever and Martin's discovery of its terrible fate. This scene even brought tears to my eyes, and I'm a black-hearted glacier of a man when it comes to animals in movies. So yes, this film does have some compassion and depth of feeling, even though those obviously aren't its primary concerns.

The Fly II gets points for going in unexpected directions at least, which is if anything more in keeping with the franchise as a whole than I'd have thought possible. Each of these films has its own distinct personality: The Fly is daffy but grim, Return of the Fly is a campfest with kernels of existential dread, Curse of the Fly is an atmospheric gothic, The Fly '86 is a deeply felt body horror, and now The Fly II is a morality play about life and death within the capitalism of science. No two films are alike, even though they share the same general idea. This one is certainly on the lower end of the scale, but they all have something to offer that makes marathoning them in quick succession less of a thunderous slog than your average horror movie franchise.

As a member of the extended Delambre/Brundle family, The Fly II is welcome to Christmas dinner. I probably won't seek to rewatch anything but that rad face-melting scene, but it was a delightful treat even for all its empty calories.

TL;DR: The Fly II is the perfectly adequate capper to a franchise that never stumbles too far from decency.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1083

Reviews In This Series
The Fly (Neumann, 1958)
Return of the Fly (Bernds, 1959)
Curse of the Fly (Sharp, 1965)
The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
The Fly II (Walas, 1989)

Fly Away Home

Year: 1986

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz 

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Well, four films deep into a marathon we weren't even supposed to do, we've arrived at the reason I started this whole mess in the first place: David Cronenberg's classic remake The Fly, which until now was one of my biggest horror blind spots (now the movie at the number one spot is probably The Haunting, in case anyone is keeping track). Not only is it my first real excursion into the Cronenberg oeuvre (I saw The Dead Zone as a kid and I've seen the mediocre non-horror M. Butterfly, but that's it), it's the movie that I decided would be the final brick in my opinion of Jeff Goldblum.

I've never been taken with the actor's endless array of tics and "ums" and "uhs," but I'll be the first to admit I came at his career from the wrong direction. You're probably not supposed to familiarize yourself with his work starting at The Switch, Morning Glory, and his cameo on Friends. Thor: Ragnarok was a step in the right direction, less so Jurassic Park (which is a masterpiece, but no thanks to him). Anyway, there was a lot riding on this movie, and I'm happy to say it withstood my probably too-intense demands upon it.

At least now I know he was weirdly ripped once and had a baboon friend.

So I still don't like Jeff Goldblum, but I can finally at least accept that he is well cast when he is asked to play wildly intelligent men who are also pompous asses. Said pompous ass is Seth Brundle, a man who is in the final stages of developing a teleportation machine, spurred on by his own intense motion sickness. Enter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a reporter who falls in love with him, but also wants to document the final stages of his experiments in a bestselling book that honestly sounds like it would have been pretty boring if all went according to plan.

Alas, all does not go according to plan. When Veronica leaves in the middle of the night to clear things up with her troublemaking ex/editor/Game of Thrones name-haver Stathis Borans (John Getz), Seth tests his teleporter on himself in a fit of drunken egomania. Unbeknownst to him because he isn't caught up on his 50's sci-fi classics, a common housefly joins him in the teleportation booth and they are bonded together on the molecular level. At first, this manifests itself as a surge of superhuman energy that causes a rift between Seth and Veronica, but then Brundle's body slowly degenerates into a half-human, half-fly monstrosity.

It's, shall we say, hella gross.

The Fly really only takes the skeleton of the original's plot, and applies a great deal of gooey flesh to it, but the overall feeling remains substantially the same, in a really interesting way. The context of both stories is so very different, but they're both at their core about the trials of a loving couple who are suddenly and inexplicably faced with the fact that one partner is doomed to die much sooner than anticipated, thanks to their own hubris. Cronenberg's film definitely foregrounds the metaphor of a fatal illness, because of course it does, but it shares the emotional core of a woman staring directly into the face of her love interest's mortality. And that face is pretty ugly, if you hadn't noticed.

And while I have my qualms about Goldblum's general Goldbluminess (it was certainly fresher back in 1986 at least, before he had the chance to Christopher Walken himself and eventually become a caricature of his own mannerisms), Geena Davis knocks it out of the park here. Especially in the third act when she is doled out her own little slice of body horror, the existential dread that crashes upon her is truly harrowing and spellbinding.

Maybe she fueled her performance by drawing from the pure horror that is both of their haircuts in this movie.

Honestly, The Fly is probably one of the most essential remakes ever made, respecting the intent and form of the original while applying a new director's very strong personality to the material, improving it without denying its inherent special qualities. And boy does Cronenberg have a personality. I have it on good authority that this is his warmest, most emotional movie, but he sure does find a way to work in a lot of talk about transcending the flesh and whatnot. 

And transcend the flesh he does. The final act of this movie is replete with some of the most disgusting ooey gooey special effects you ever did see. I'm a bit of a horehound myself, but the things that really get my skin crawling are intimate bits of gore like, oh, the fact that there are scenes involving the removal of both teeth AND fingernails because why the f**k not? It's certainly not for everyone, to the point that it's hardly for anyone, but the fly transformation is certainly a makeup masterwork, showcasing just how far movie magic had come in the almost three decades since the original movie hit theaters. 

It's only aided by the incredible production design, which updates the pedestrian glass cases of the "matter transmitter" into a vaguely alien pod that spews billowing white smoke like the mouth of a cauldron.

Ridley Scott is shook.

The thing they don't tell you is just how much of a slow burn it is to get to any of that. There is a lot of movie before we go full-tilt body horror, and while the structure isn't as wonky and riddled with filler as its source material, there are a couple of moments where it flags before it reaches that home stretch. Maybe I'm just being a petulant gay who's sick of watching straight people fall in love, but something about their romantic chemistry wasn't exactly pulling me in at first, and I had a tough time reconciling how quickly they seemed to form a bond we were supposed to view as unbreakable. Well, not unbreakable, but strong enough to be rough to watch when it's tested.

Look, they get there in the end, but it was just a bit of a struggle for me personally. Anyhow, who could possibly care about some niggling first act qualms when the movie delivers such a marrow-churning display of geek show grotesquerie with a dash of existential subtext for flavor? The Fly is certainly the best of the franchise without a doubt (although I've liked all of them so far to one degree or another), but you didn't really need me to tell you that, did you?

TL;DR: The Fly is the ultimate example of a director decanting their brain directly onto a property and fundamentally changing it for the better.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1153
Reviews In This Series
The Fly (Neumann, 1958)
Return of the Fly (Bernds, 1959)
Curse of the Fly (Sharp, 1965)
The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
The Fly II (Walas, 1989)