The Fly (1986)

It's October..."so maybe I should pay attention to horror films." How cliché. I have some planned and in the hopper, but I noticed "The Large Association of Movie Blogs" is showcasing director David Cronenberg, so I'm also going to be throwing in a bunch of Cronenberg reviews from the past and the retrospective present. 

After all, you can't have a Cronenberg movie without a little bit of horror...somewhere.

The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986) It was a time when things were just getting gooier in movies. The things you could do with special effects make-up and mechanics were taking a quantum leap. Alien came out in 1979. John Carpenter's version of The Thing was released in 1982. It seemed like a perfectly natural thing for 20th Century Fox to attempt a remake—not so much that Mel Brooks and his Brooksfilms would be the production company—for director David Cronenberg to update a version of the completely awful horror flick The Fly (even if it DID have a screenplay by James Clavell). 

And why not? Cronenberg had a way with viscera and making icky movies with a brain...and a spine (a distended spine, maybe, but they were solid features). But, what was a bit different about his version of The Fly was it also had a heart. It was a bleeding, spurting heart, but...it was a heart.

Reporter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) meets inventor and theoretician Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) at a party being thrown by his funders, Bartok Industries, and he tells her about his research on transportation. Realizing this could be a scientific break-through, Veronica pitches it to her editor Stathis Bohrens (John Getz). As Brundle's transportation device requires the conversion of matter to energy and then the top to bottom resequencing of the energy back to matter, he gives the story a pass. Veronica's disappointed, but a visit from Brundle to the magazine's office to stop any story makes the decision an opportune one for all parties.

Brundle's research has hit a snag. His transporter can move inanimate objects, but living things—well, that's another tissue, entirely. Test subjects don't show up the same way they left. Veronica sees this for herself when Brundle invites her to document his research—a test baboon materializes inside out—convenient for autopsies, maybe, but not for the betterment of mankind.

All that apartment visiting and recording of horrific lab accidents (and the resulting unseen clean-up afterwards) must have an odd erotic effect, as Brundle and Veronica become attracted to each other and sleep together, a conjugal conflict of interest in journalistic circles. But a passing remark by Veronica inspires Brundle to try another approach in programming and voila!—the next test actually produces a baboon with internal organs staying internal in the pod. Eureka!

Plans are made to do the story, but that means Veronica is spending more time with her ex than with Brundle and for someone with a lot of intellect but no perspective, that raises a monster—a big green one.

If that were all that came from it, it would be preferable. But Brundle is compelled to test the transporter on himself.

If only he'd thought to include a bug-zapper in the transporter...or at least a screen-door.

During the test, Brundle's DNA is combined with another living organism in the pod—a stray fly (it begs the question of how well he cleaned up after the first baboon test...or what would happen with any other micro-biology in the chamber). At first, he isn't aware of any change, except his strength and stamina have increased. It isn't long, however, before bug-hairs start sprouting from his back and he gets a mean case of psoriasis. Checking the logs for his experiment, he realizes that his DNA has been scrambled with the fly in the chamber, and that his body is starting to react to change—he isn't the same man he was before he transported and transubstantiated. Everything worked out well for Peter Parker, but Brundle gets the powers, the wall-crawling, but also the not so pleasant ability to eat by spewing digestive bile onto his meal and melting it in order to consume. Plus, he starts to lose limbs and shed his skin...and well, turn into a fly.

Even as Brundle deteriorates, we see his transformation through the eyes of Veronica, who has an additional worry—she's pregnant with Brundle's...whatever. It's her mounting horror over what is happening to someone she loves that keeps The Fly as grounded as it is, without clipping its horror-wings while doing it. 

More than one reviewer mentioned the AIDS epidemic in their review at the time of the film's release (although Cronenberg dismissed the specificity of it). It could be cancer or Lew Gehrig's Disease or MS or any other disease that turns the body against its host that the film has an emotional connection to that might resonate with audiences. We've all been helpless watching disease take someone we love and transform them. We've all lived through our own horrors—maybe not as extreme as this—but still scary, which makes The Fly a strangely heart-felt tragedy and turned into Cronenberg's biggest box-office hit in the United States.

It seems so easy on "Star Trek"...except in "Mad" Magazine parodies.