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)

Shoo Fly

Year: 1965

Director: Don Sharp

Cast: Brian Donlevy, George Baker, Carole Gray 

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

Ah, here we're getting back to familiar territory. A six-years-later sequel that doesn't star anyone from the original, has a completely confounding continuity with the previous entries, and was produced on the cheap by a completely different company in England. Is this a Children of the Corn movie? Nope, it's just Curse of the Fly, a flick where absolutely nobody turns into a giant fly.

Also, the entire opening credits sequence rolls over shots of a woman running through a field in her underwear. Y'know, for science.

Curse of the Fly at least follows another leg of the Delambre family, so we're in somewhat familiar territory, even if nobody in the cast is remotely French enough to pronounce the name properly this time around (we get a lot of "de-lom-BRAY," sledgehammering that final syllable). Martin Delambre (George Baker) is the son of Henri Delambre (Brian Donlevy). It is explicitly mentioned that Martin's grandfather is the original Fly, which would make him Andre's grandson. But then you remember that Andre only had one kid before he died, and his name was Philippe. And then you immediately stop caring to preserve your sanity.

Anyway, Martin meets Patricia (Carole Gray), the aforementioned underwear runner, along the side of the road and takes her to Montreal where they fall in love over the course of the week, get married agreeing that they both don't want to know anything about the other's backstory, and return to his secluded mansion as husband and wife. While this seems like a sweet deal for a penniless wanderer at first, not all is as it seems at the Delambre abode. 

First off, Martin's devoted servants Tai (Burt Kwouk) and Wan (Yvette Rees in yellowface, boo) seem to be hiding something, and Wan especially seems dead set on gaslighting Patricia straight out of that house. And we see Martin and his father fiddling with their teleportation machine. It seems to be working just fine, but their first failed tests may have resulted in whatever is being locked away in those cages in the backyard.

...Perhaps.

Something we must face before we press on: Curse of the Fly is not a Fly movie. It's a mad science movie, certainly, using a lot of the trappings of the first two movies. But it's not a Fly movie. If you can push past that fact, there's enough here to keep you watching, but you must be made of sterner stuff to swallow this one. That said, it's actually a quasi-remake of Rebecca hybridized with The Island of Dr. Moreau that takes you on a lot of bizarre twists and turns. Fly-less turns, yes, but reasonably interesting ones nonetheless.

Curse of the Fly is more of an abstraction of the Fly concept, running with the idea that this family's obsession with developing teleportation will constantly be its downfall. It's all about the stupid hubris of man and science (and movie producer, evidently). So we're at least back to familiar 50's-esque territory in that regard. If anything, this movie takes the science-fear one step further, directly positing that scientists are inherently murderers by doing what they do.

And the Rebecca-ness of it all is actually pretty satisfying. I wish Carole Gray could achieve a facial expression beyond "vacant surprise," but the plot she is funneled through has some extremely creepy, almost gothic atmosphere. And Wan, the Mrs. Danvers analogue, is an epically evil presence (insidious racial undertones aside, it's a great performance). Her efforts to depose the new Mrs. Delambre are unsubtly maniacal in the best way possible, only further servicing that constant undertone of a lot of these movies, where men completely ignore the fears and experiences of women for their own sinister purposes.

There's pretty clearly only one purpose Patricia has been brought here in the first place.

The story of a woman being taken to a creepy old house where secrets are buried and everyone is working against her might not be what we signed up for, but it's what we get and it ain't half bad. And we aren't completely deprived of monstrous special effects, they just come in the form of the [spoilers, sorta] irradiated monsters kept in the back garden. The makeup used doesn't really vary between the two main creatures, but it's a fun bit of prosthetic work that makes their faces seem half-melted, a sight that works perfectly within the black and white aesthetic.

In color, this would probably just look like a Nacho Libre spinoff.

And anyone who's seen 1958's The Fly is no stranger to a dour ending, but this one is just grim. It doesn't land quite as well, because we still don't really have a grasp on these characters or why we should care about them (except for Wan, who gets a deliciously psychosexual moment in the back garden), but it's still impressively dark for a film of its vintage. It might be cheap and shakily performed, but it's unrelenting in its way.

Plus, this is the first Fly movie that doesn't think you'll be obsessed with its scientific process. The amount of time we're forced to sit there and watch random lights flash is kept to a minimum, with the small addition of welding masks instead of goggles so you know this time we're Super Advanced (for anyone who has taken on the unenviable task of keeping up with the timeline here, we're now a good two generations down from the original, with the youngest being fully grown, so this movie takes place in, oh, about 2008).

This one also actually seems somewhat aware of its treatment of women, which is saying something considering that, and I repeat, the entire opening credits roll over a scene of Patricia in her bra and panties running through a dewy field. We do get a hilariously ill-conceived line where Henri finds out Martin has a new wife and tells him to "send her back," but for the most part Patricia is the protagonist of this movie, much in the same way that something like I Married a Monster from Outer Space is accidentally, inherently about the female character it sets out to terrorize.

Curse of the Fly is probably the weakest of the bunch so far, especially when you measure it by the metric of being a f**king Fly movie, but for the most part it's still worth a look. It's probably better the less 60's horror cinema you've seen, because you have less to compare it to, but for a rote B-picture in a time when those movies were starting to become out of vogue, you could definitely make a much much worse decision than this one.

TL;DR: Curse of the Fly is more of an abstraction of the franchise's concept than anything, but it's a mildly satisfying one in spite of that.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1161
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)

Superfly

Year: 1959

Director: Edward Bernds

Cast: Vincent Price, Brett Halsey, David Frankham

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

This just in, I'm an idiot, and I love what I do way too much. This October I'm already running a Children of the Corn marathon in addition to our annual crossover with Cardboard Science at Kinemalogue. But I did a bad thing. After Hunter assigned me to watch 1958's The Fly, I looked at my shelf and realized I owned the Cronenberg remake, even though I'd never seen it. Then I researched the franchise and learned that the original had two sequels and the remake had one. What's this? A franchise I'd never seen before and barely even knew about? You know I had to get on that crap. 

I was already feeling kind of bad that this Corn marathon coincides with the series we're currently running on my podcast Scream 101, so it's kind of redundant if someone both listens to the podcast and reads my blog (even though that's assuming a lot on your part to begin with). Because of that, I thought I'd do something extra special. So hey! Whatever the twisted genesis, this October I'm running a bonus series on the five entries in The Fly franchise. Maybe I'll get a P.O. box so you can send me those straitjackets with more convenience.

Pictured: Me grappling with my inner completist demons.

Return of the Fly arrived just one year after The Fly sucked a solid chunk of money up through its B-movie proboscis. The studio did what any self-respecting company would do in this situation: rush through a follow-up and slash the budget, reverting this entry to the much cheaper black-and-white, which also helped cover up any seams in the special effects.

So, the plot. The hero of the last film obviously being dead, we pick up with his son, who was eight years old in 1958 but seems to be in his mid-to-late 20's at this point, which would seem to set this film in the late 70's if the filmmakers paid a single shred of attention to detail. But judging by the fact that no fewer than two times we see a door destroyed, only for it to be fully functional and whole in the very next scene, they maybe didn't care too much about such pesky little nuisances as details.

Anyway! The son in question is Philippe Delambre (Brett Halsey, and I certainly don't mind the time jump because he is the cutest), who against the wishes of his uncle François (Vincent Price, the only returning performer) continues his father's research to develop a teleportation device. He does this with the help of his assistant Alan Hinds (David Frankham), who might not be as nice as he seems. Oh, and one of these people is gonna turn into a half-fly half-human monster, but did I need to tell you that?

At cross purposes, the two scientists and the reluctant François pick up their work in a secluded mansion left to Philippe by his grandfather. Also left to him is the housekeeper and her lovely daughter Cecile Bonnard (Danielle De Metz), who becomes an extremely half-assed love interest for Philippe.

But who could blame her?

Return of the Fly certainly indulges in the sequel sin of "the same, only worse" in a lot of aspects (more on that later), but the thing that surprised me is that it's almost as delightful an entry in the 50's science fiction canon. The scenes where the movie shines err on the side of melodrama more than horror, but the first two acts are perhaps even superior. The original has a killer opening but once the filmlong flashback begins, there are many stalls and starts before anything meaningful happens. Here, we don't see any fly action before the 50-minute mark, but the movie is already operating on all cylinders. 

[EN: Be prepared for some medium spoilers, folks, throughout the remainder of the review.]

It is pretty quickly revealed that Alan Hinds is a criminal on the lam who wants to make his fortune by stealing the plans for the teleporter, and his duplicity adds a layer of tension to the repetitive science experiment scenes that wasn't there last time. All three of the characters working on this project have their own purposes and motivations that chafe against the others, and the sheer amount of peering through window curtains and tailing each other in cars is pure confection to any fan of intrigue.

Because Lord knows we won't be sated by eleven more scenes of flashing Science Lights.

There are even two scenes in the pre-fly portion of the film that are extremely effective and harrowing. The first involves a splicing accident that gives a guinea pig human hands in the film's most existentially terrifying special effect. The second is the immediate preamble to the fly-ification (which is actually brought on by duplicity rather than scientific hubris, for a nice change). You see the character in question realize exactly what's about to happen to him, and the dawning horror on his face is almost too much to bear.

Of course, as soon as the fly thing happens, the movie falls the f**k apart. For one thing, it doubles down on a lame element that was only implied in the original film. This film basically posits that the only reason flies aren't bloodthirsty serial killers is that they're too tiny. As soon as it gains human form, it goes on an ill-motivated rampage through town that combines boring shots of him wandering through forests with bizarre slasher-esque kills that don't even involve his giant fly mandibles, which are pretty freaking cool (the fly head here is a much better mask, and while the film indulges in showing it perhaps too much, it nevertheless deserves closer inspection).

Unfortunately, the human-head fly-body situation is a microscopic fraction as chilling as the last time,  and is shown far too early in the third act to be particularly useful toward chilling the spine. And speaking of things from last time that are even worse, we all know Vincent Price was wasted in The Fly, but Return of the Fly treats him like a featured extra, having him deliver a good fifty percent of his performance from bed. The ending is also entirely perfunctory, an unsatisfying button to a film that immediately began deflating the second the horror actually started happening in earnest.

Return of the Fly fails to accomplish its largest goals, but it's still a satisfying romp through the annals of sci-fi history and I'm glad I made the trek. Plus, if nothing else, it gave me a guinea pig moment I'll never forget.

Behold!

TL;DR: Return of the Fly is a reasonably satisfying sequel that ups the ante in pretty lame ways but delivers 50's sci-fi tension like you wouldn't believe.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1150
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)

Cardboard Science: The Metamorphosis

Now, we couldn't just let an October go by without our annual crossover event between Popcorn Culture's Census Bloodbath and Kinemalogue's Cardboard Science. My good internet friend Hunter Allen has assigned me three more 50's sci-fi flicks and you should head over there later this month to catch his thoughts on my three 80's slasher picks. All three of his films this time around hail from the grand year of 1958, but we'll be starting with the one that's probably the most famous, thanks to David Cronenberg's body horror remake from three decades later.

Year: 1958
Director: Kurt Neumann
Cast: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

Cardboard Science is a project that really takes me out of my comfort zone. I'm not one to shy away from older films or different genres, but the bulk of my cinema knowledge comes from the 1970's to now, and doesn't really involve science fiction the way that it probably should. But that's why it's important to have friends with different interests from yourself, because it's so important to know where the things that you like came from, and The Fly really gave us a lot more than I would have expected.

It really tested the capacity of human facial expressions, as well.

The Fly begins with a terrible crime being committed in a Montreal factory. Andre Delambre (David Hedison, probably best known as James Bond bestie Felix Leiter) has been crushed to death in an industrial press and his wife Helene (Patricia Owens) freely admits to being the one responsible. Andre's brother François (Vincent Price) begins working with the police to figure out what happened to this poor couple, eventually drawing a lengthy confession from Helene that seems quite impossible.

In a lengthy flashback, we see Andre's attempts to perfect a teleportation machine in his basement and Helene's reactions to his untoward obsession. One day, when a housefly gets into the teleportation tube, Andre reaps what he has sown with his hubris and finds that his cells have been mixed up with that of the fly. Helene and her son Phillipe (Charles Herbert) must attempt to find the fly with his human cells, the only shot at getting the proper parts back in order.

I was trying to avoid too many spoilers, but it's tough for a movie that begins with the end and is literally titled The Fly.

A lot of 1950's movies were remade to great effect in the 80's, including The Thing from Another World and my beloved The Blob. The reason these remakes were so good is that they took the political wiliness of those films and adapted it to modern day fears alongside a heaping helping of top notch special effects. The Fly definitely belongs to this category, but of the source films it's definitely the thinnest. Cronenberg had to add a lot of material to give this film anything resembling meaty subtext, because what we get here is some pretty bog-standard "scientist shouldn't have played in God's sandbox" boilerplate.

That's not to say that this is a bad thing. The Fly might be rather shallow, but it has a lot to show for it. For one thing, much like I Married a Monster from Outer Space, it positions its male lead in the monstrous role, almost incidentally causing the film to have a female protagonist. Even now, that's rather hard to find in science fiction, and I appreciate the opportunity to see one whenever it's given.

For another, The Fly embraces its position as a meat and potatoes shocker, wringing tension almost miraculously out of its charmingly low budget. For one thing, the murder mystery opening plot (as bizarrely structured as it is) doles out hints of just how buck wild this situation has gotten at a brutally steady drip. And before Helene finds out the truth, Andre spends his time with a blanket over his head, grunting in desperation to get his wife to understand. If anything, this is even creepier than the eventual reveal, because something is clearly perilously wrong but everything about the situation seems so mundane and domestic at first glance.

Who knows, this could just be an elaborate sex game or something.

There are really only two special effects sequences of note here: one featuring a rather dodgy fly head that is redeemed by its clever depiction of Helene's scream as viewed through multifaceted insect eyes, and the other... Well, the other is probably the most iconic element of this film and that's for a reason, my friend. I shan't necessarily spoil it, but you know what scene I'm talking about, and even though you can see some of the strings sixty years later, it's still bone-chilling. It's particularly gruesome and nihilistic for a film of this vintage, using its fantastical effects to show how very wrong a path a man's hubris can lead him down.

While I wouldn't say the whole movie is like this, The Fly does definitely have a rather intense approach to some of its material. The opening murder is pretty brutal and slathered in stage blood, and the hopelessness of the whole situation is certainly not lost on its participants. And there are actual, permanent casualties, including but not limited to the Delambre's poor pet cat.

What it lacks in substance, it makes up for by alternating between being a fun sci-fi romp and pure gut-punch nihilistic horror. It's a shame Vincent Price isn't asked to participate in either of these things, though, because he is well and truly wasted as "guy who eventually gets the story to happen." All the insane acting moments are given to Patricia Owens, who does as well as she can, but she's no Vincent Price.

Nevertheless, The Fly is satisfying in a way that a lot of horror of this vintage kind of isn't. It's not afraid to take certain risks, and it's almost wicked in this fearlessness. It's definitely not my favorite of the movies that Hunter has assigned for me, but I'm glad I gained a reason to see it and that I saw it before viewing the Cronenberg version. Watching those films the other way around seems like a recipe for disappointment, because it's so much more stripped-down and inelegant, but the way I see it, it's just peachy with me.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• The basic science of this is actually pretty credible, in that their understanding of atoms and how they work is pretty consistent with contemporary understanding. 
• That said, the filmmakers seem to think that we'll be so fascinated by flashing lights that we'll want to watch the same sequence of pseudoscientific events thirteen times over, and at length.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• It's harder for the men to comprehend the fact that a woman operated heavy machinery than that she murdered her own husband.
• Helene's six-year-old son talks about how she told him to set the weird-looking fly free then asked him to catch it again an hour later with this little chestnut: "She changed her mind, you know how women are." I guess they started 'em young back then.
• Andre hilariously lounges in his lawn chair while wearing a full suit.

Sensawunda:

• There's an implication that Andre's fly hand might be evil, because... why not, I guess?
• I just want to bring up the sound design, which I forgot to mention. I won't forget about the noise involved when Fly-Andre drinks milk anytime soon.

TL;DR: The Fly is a fun little cheapie shocker with an excellent, showstopping finale.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1269
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)

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend Without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)