Editor’s Note, bright and early: Thanks, Tyler, for this excellent example of a Things I Fear Community Post Submission! Tyler graciously submitted his The Fly Movie Review for your entertainment and with the ambition to become internet famous overnight. When Tyler is not reading or writing excellent Things I Fear content, he’s creating, producing, editing, and another verbing his very own podcast which you can check out here. If you want to be awesome like Tyler by submitting your own Movie Review, post about a specific Fear, or want to submit an idea for a future post, you can do so by contacting me through the handy form on the website or on Facebook if the idea of a form creeps you out. I get that. Now can we please start reading Tyler’s The Fly Movie Review?
Back when I was wee (and trust me, this will make sense eventually), I recall having a feverish dream that all of my limbs had been removed and replaced with these thin, metal spikes. Flailing about with said mechanical monstrosities, I remember my dream-self fretting over what the rest of my life would be like now that my good ol’ tried-and-true limbs of flesh were no longer of (or on) my person. How would I use the stairs? What would my friends think? Who was going to tie my shoes? All legitimate fears that would need to be addressed in my freakish new life as a spiky grotesque.
Unbeknownst to young me, these feelings of body-related dread are the bread and butter of a particular genre of horror known as Body Horror. Body Horror pulls its scares from an audience by depicting graphic and all-around unpleasant violations of the human body. These violations can range from unnatural movement (think that thing from The Grudge walking down the stairs all contorted and freaky) to gratuitous mutilations/modifications of the human form (such as *retch* The Human Centipede movies). My nightmare was derived from this latter kind, as was (cue segue) David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi horror classic, The Fly.
Now, if Cronenberg’s name sounds familiar to you, hopefully it’s because of the four-decade-long career he has enjoyed as a director of horror, sci-fi, and thriller classics. But it’s more likely because of an episode of Rick and Morty where the titular characters accidentally turn all of the world’s inhabitants into these deformed monsters referred to as “Cronenbergs”. The reason for this naming convention has nothing to do with David Cronenberg’s appearance; from the outside, he seems like a very normal Canadian. No, the reason that Cronenberg’s name was repurposed into a noun meaning “deformed monster” (as well as a verb for the act of turning someone into a deformed monster) is because he is the master of Body Horror. Don’t believe me? Go have a look at Videodrome from 1983, where James Woods develops a strange, gaping maw in his stomach that eats VHS tapes. Or how about 2007’s Eastern Promises, where Viggo Mortensen is subjected to the most brutal knife fight I’ve ever seen? Cronenberg deliberately sets the scene in a locker room so you can see each slash of the knife on the character’s bare flesh *shiver*. If these things sound like something you’d enjoy then A) condolences for being my brand of psycho, and B) perhaps you’d get a kick out of The Fly, which shall be reviewed without further ado, delay, or tangent . . . here we go!
Based off a short story (and drawing inspiration from the OG 1958 film), the 1986 version of The Fly is about a ridiculously awkward scientist named Seth Brundle (played by a strangely sexy Jeff Goldblum) who has discovered the secret behind teleportation of matter. Imagine: no more need for planes, trains, or automobiles. Simply step into a special teleportation chamber (i.e. telepod) and materialize instantly in another pod somewhere else. That sure would have made Steve Martin’s trip home for Thanksgiving a tad easier! Anyway, Brundle is very excited about his invention and – in a moment of drunken naiveté – decides to use himself as a test for the first human teleportation. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that damn fly. Yes, a housefly accidentally gets into the telepod with our intrepid Dr. Brundle, leading to a fusion of their genes during teleportation. Though everything seems fine at first, our chiselled hero slowly starts to mutate into a disgusting fly-human hybrid as his poor girlfriend (played by a strangely frizzy Geena Davis) looks on in a mixture of Disbelief, Disgust, and Despair – otherwise known as the three D’s of horror movies. The premise itself probably seems rather wonky and – shall we say – scientifically inelegant. Indeed, the number of science-related facepalms I did throughout my viewing would have made the Picard memes proud. Allow me a few nerd-rage moments, if you will. Ahem. DISEASES DON’T “WANT” THINGS; YOU CAN’T PROGRAM A COMPUTER TO “BE MADE CRAZY BY FLESH”; AND SCIENCE IS DONE IN REPLICATES FOR A REASON! *deep, beleaguered breath* Anywho!
Scientific inaccuracy aside, the true draw of The Fly is undoubtedly the visual effects needed to pull off the Body Horror elements of the film. Even before you get to the fly stuff, you have some truly disturbing images of monkeys being turned inside out by the telepod, wrists being graphically broken in ways that allow the jagged bone to rip through the skin, and a scene that can only be described as “extracting a maggot from an unwilling womb” . . . Trust me, you don’t want to know more than that. And then you get to Brundle-Fly. Oh, Brundle-Fly, you deformed bastion of ’80s nerve and ghoulish verve, you. Just google “Brundle-Fly” and take a look at the images. I dare you! What you’ll see is the product of a bunch of people working really hard to freak you out. The transformation starts out slowly, with Cronenberg using green-grey lighting to give Mr. Goldblum a sickly quality. Then the pockmarks appear, the skin becomes rougher and cracked – then there’s some rather intense bloating, followed by the loss of extraneous non-fly body parts (you know, like teeth, fingernails, ears, and such) before human flesh rips open in a climax of macabre prosthetics to reveal the true humanoid insect that was incubating beneath the surface. Cue Geena Davis’s scream. Roll credits. You set out to ruin my dinner, Mr. Cronenberg, and you succeeded. And I set out to write The Fly Movie Review and also succeeded.
But if the effects were the only reason to watch The Fly then it’d just be another schlocky B-movie from an era filled to the point of bursting with examples of just that. The reason The Fly has endured well into the 21st century is because it doesn’t just show you the terrible things that misbegotten science can do to the human form, but it forces you to reckon with the emotional impact of these things. In other words, it draws on the fear of that nightmare I experienced in my larval state: the fear of what impact these changes will have on you, your life, and your loved ones. Though infrequently mentioned thus far, Geena Davis’s character is really the key here. The advent of Brundle-Fly is only as horrifying as it is because of the impact it has on the relationship between Goldblum and Davis. Each step further away from normality is another nail in the coffin of this romance, a romance in which we as the audience have become invested. Each body part that grossly falls off and plops onto the floor is irreversible damage done to not one but two human lives. And each acquired, fly-like behaviour takes us further from the meet-cute that started this tale.
Anyone with a budget and a decent art department can make you feel gross while mutilating the human form. It takes talented actors, detailed and determined visual strategies, and a steady hand at the wheel to go beyond mere shock factor and pull off the emotional wallop of The Fly. So, hold tight to a loved one and give it a try this Halloween. Just don’t eat anything during . . . or directly before . . . or directly after. Maybe just fast for the day to be safe.
