Halloween Blogathon: The Fly

It’s that classic tale of boy meets girl, unless you count the girl being a crack science reporter and the boy being a semi-mad genius obsessed with teleportation.

Seth Brundle is a researcher working on how to make teleportation work.   Veronica Quaife scents a story in Seth Brundle; she follows him back to his lab and he shows her these nifty two telepods he’s been working on.  After some arguing, the two agree that Veronica can hang around and cover one of the greatest scientific achievements ever.   It soon becomes more than that, though, and Seth and Veronica’s communication problems soon cause Seth to get drunk and make a very, very bad decision.

I’d say that accidentally teleporting yourself with a common housefly is a very large problem, especially when you combine with the fly at a molecular level with a human to create Brundlefly.   Ick.

David Cronenberg remade the fly from a hokey ’50’s sci-fi flick (come on, the scientist’s head was practically pasted onto a fly’s body) into a much more modern retelling of the horrors that can be achieved through science and arguably what it means to be human.    While it’s gory, sure, Cronenberg never uses violence for violence’s sake (Rob Zombie, we’ll get to you later); instead, he uses it when necessary.   … And let’s face it, Goldblum’s transformation into the fully realized Brundlefly, with his half-fly, half-human body and all the changes he has to make to get there, is going to be gory no matter what

Creepiest moment: Has got to be, hands down, Brundle’s collection of body parts that have fallen off which he stores in his medicine cabinet.   Yuck.  Either that or Goldblum’s semi-deranged rant about taking a dip in the plasma pool.

Scariest moment: I can never, ever, ever hear about someone having a baby without picturing Geena Davis giving birth to a glo-worm.

Imagine that thing, sans the cutesy face and nightcap.   OH, THE HORROR OF IT ALL.

I love The Fly.  It’s got a lot of moments of genuine horror and suspense, as well as one of the weirdest performances Goldblum has done.      It’s definitely not one of the weirdest movies David Cronenberg has done (Oh!  David, let’s be BFF just for The Brood!) but I think, one of the best.   It’s a good fright flick that’s watchable just for the scares or if you want, for the ethical and moral questions it raises.