The Fly (1986)
Remember when The Exorcist and Alien were released? They both generated a lot of buzz (no pun intended), not just for being terrifying, but also for being so disgusting that many theater managers reported audience members throwing up in the lobby. The Fly – a remake of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film, itself an adaptation of George Langelaan’s short story – could be the next film to cause mass vomiting. This is one of the most nauseating movies of recent memory, a mixture of traditional blood-and-guts gore and scatology. The latter was especially hard to watch; the title character’s ability to regurgitate acidic juices is put on graphic display, as are sudden spurts of pus. There are also several shots of body parts falling off, including fingernails. And then there’s one thoroughly upsetting scene where a gigantic maggot is featured. Needless to say, you don’t want to see this movie on a full stomach.
Should I have expected differently? After all, it was co-written and directed by David Cronenberg, who, between They Came from Within, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, and Videodrome, is clearly not afraid to shock audiences with visceral, gruesome imagery. Perhaps my memories of the 1958 film were getting in the way; despite being another monster movie in a decade utterly saturated with monster movies, it stood out as one of the more entertaining examples of the genre, and the gore was kept to a minimum. More likely, however, it’s a matter of personal taste. Cronenberg’s visual aesthetic just isn’t my cup of tea. I find it more repulsive than thrilling or enlightening. The Fly did nothing to change this perception.
But there’s more to it than that. As originally written by Langelaan, and as first adapted by Neumann, the story was escapist and not intended to be about anything – save for the dangers of science going too far, which, even by the late ‘50s, was already an old narrative cliche. Simple as the story was, it worked; it didn’t have to be anything more than what it so obviously was. Cronenberg, however, insisted on applying meaning to the story – his own special brand of opaque, esoteric meaning, which almost always involves hideous deformities, sex, and the grotesque fusion of human flesh and machinery. I’ve rarely left his movies knowing what he was trying to say. This one is no exception. What are we to make of dialogue such as, “You can’t penetrate beyond society’s sick, gray fear of the flesh”? Or, “Drink deep, or taste not, the plasma spring … a deep, penetrating dive into the plasma pool”? Philosophical musings, or the pretentious ramblings of a writer with very strange ideas about how to tell a story?
The basic premise is true to Langelaan’s original concept: A brilliant scientist accidentally fuses his body with that of a fly, the result of an error in his own experiment with teleportation technology. The details, however, have been rewritten from the ground up. There are the little things, like shifting the setting to now and having it take place in Toronto instead of Montreal (France in Langelaan’s story). There are also the bigger things, like renaming all the characters, adding new ones, and deleting others. And then there’s the title character. In Neumann’s film, the fusion was far simpler, with only the head and arm of each creature getting swapped; in Cronenberg’s film, the fusion happens at the genetic level, and the scientist’s transformation is gradual. Gradual, but dramatic; by the final act, he’s arguably one of the most hideous movie monsters ever created, all scabbed, slimy skin and asymmetrical limbs lolling about scarily.
The scientist, here named Seth Brundle, is played by Jeff Goldblum as an atypical eccentric scientist, with an unusual cadence, a fondness for staggered pauses, and a very odd sense of humor that somehow carries into the later stages of his transformation. Into his life enters journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), who sees his telepods in action and believes, as all driven journalists in the movies believe, that she has the story of a lifetime. Of course, she and Brundle will fall in love. This incurs the vindictive wrath of Quaife’s editor and ex-boyfriend (John Getz) … which is strange, given the part he has to play in the final act. Anyway, Brundle – in a jealous, drunken stupor – decides to immediately start human trials on the safety of his teleporters, the test subject being himself. After unknowingly transporting himself with a wayward fly and slowly transforming into a revolting human/fly hybrid, Quaife’s decision to help Brundle is dramatically complicated by a turn of events I will not reveal.
And then there was the ending, which springs on us so quickly that we barely register the scrolling of the end credits until it’s nearly over. Cronenberg gives us a climax, but he provides no resolution. Unfortunately, there’s no spoiler-free way for me to elaborate. Let’s just say that one very important question is not only left unanswered, but seems to have been forgotten entirely right as the climax was crescendoing. Why leave us with more questions than answers? We deserve answers, given the nausea we had to endure watching it from start to finish. Though disgusting, I can muster praise for the technical work that went into the makeup and puppet effects, which I have no doubt were meticulously crafted and painstaking to pull off at all, let alone to the director’s satisfaction. But overall, The Fly is self-indulgent and over the top, and just doesn’t work.
