“Once it was human as you and I!”
I’m sure everyone has a movie or two their parents warned them against. I could make a book out of my requests met with “eh, maybe when you’re older” by my dad! And I’ve gotta give him credit there, because he was right about The Exorcist!
But when I asked him about The Fly, he told me “the ending is pretty scary.” And, like a fool, I never realized he was referring to the original movie, not the Jeff Goldblum remake! So I think that freaked me out, because I watched the latter continuously thinking “wait, only the ending is scary??”
THE FLY (1986)
This might’ve been the movie that made my mom tap out of watching these alongside me!
I always knew this was a Goldblum film, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Geena Davis starring alongside him, as I just saw her in Beetlejuice the other night! But I get why one of my coworkers said this is the movie that ruined Jeff Goldblum for her!
Before watching this one, I vaguely knew the premise of a man accidentally merging his DNA with a fly, but I didn’t expect THAT level of body horror! Given the beginning with superpowers that lead to greater physical changes, I wasn’t ready for the extent of the “Brundleflt” transformation! The fingernail stuff was uncomfortably reminiscent of Black Swan, and then the wrist, the ear… shudders all around!
(And isn’t it funny that if you Google “Brundlefly,” half of the image results have Safe Search on?)
Also, Geena Davis’s editor was a creep and a half, so as eerily disturbing and tragic as that whole final act was, I was annoyed that this was the guy Geena Davis had to trust with her survival!
But hey, it was fun to realize that this movie was the origin of “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
I’m slightly side-eying David Cronenberg for the “what the heck” fest this movie was, but a shit ton of credit goes to Chris Walas, who designed Brundlefly!!!! Loved learning that this guy also did the Gremlins and the melting Nazis from Indiana Jones!
After this exercise in squeamishness, I finally learned that the movie my dad originally referred to was the OG The Fly – so of course I had to check that out as well!
THE FLY (1958)
Oh, Kurt Neumann, you had no idea what Cronenberg had in store for your movie, did you?
While the 80s adaptation is a body horror fest of deliciously unsettling extremes, the 50s film is one of those enjoyable old “horror” movies that gets its kicks from fantastically dated costume designs! Yes, we have the human-fly combination here, but it’s a lot more appealing than whatever was happening to Goldblum that whole time!
This movie is also excellently paced. I loved the scientist’s wife being the focal character, on trial for murder as she tries to explain what exactly happened to her husband. The way she helped him despite his unclear mystery was great, and some scenes were genuinely tense! You desperately want his family to find the right fly and save him!
And yeah, the ending scene was pretty freaky; I’ll give my dad that! Honestly, the whole movie could’ve ended a heck of a lot darker, but I’m glad where it ended up!
I’ve heard whispers of a The Fly remake in the works. If that comes to pass, I might go back and watch the full series for each iteration of this franchise, corny or disturbing as they might be! But I’ll still doubt that any amount of CGI can match up to Walas’s disgustingly visceral masterpiece of Brundlefly!
