CRONENBERG GOLDBLUM AND GEENA CREATE A BUZZ: THE FLY REVIEW AND GALLERY

CAST:
Jeff Goldblum (Seth Brundle), Geena Davis (Veronica Quaife), John Getz (Stathis Borans) 

PRODUCTION:

Director – David Cronenberg, Screenplay – David Cronenberg & Charles Edward Pogue, Based on the 1958 Film & the Short Story by George Langelaan, Producer – Stuart Cornfeld, Photography – Mark Irwin, Music – Howard Shore, Mechanical Effects – Jon Berg, Makeup Effects – Chris Walas, Production Design – Carol Spier. Production Company – Brooksfilm/20th Century Fox. USA. 1986.

SYNOPSIS:

Scientist Seth Brundle meets journalist Veronica Quaife at a scientific conference and tempts her into coming back to his lab to see his revolutionary design for a teleportation device. He persuades her to move in and watch as he irons out the final bugs and write an article about it. The two become lovers. Determined to prove the device works, Brundle climbs into the telepod and transmits himself. The teleportation is successful. Afterwards, Brundle demonstrates amazing physical stamina, but in the following weeks he begins to develop a bad case of eczema and then body parts start dropping off. He then discovers that during the teleportation both he and a housefly that was trapped in the telepod were reintegrated at a basic molecular level and that he is now transforming into a human/fly hybrid.

COMMENTARY:

In pre-release interviews for The Fly, writer/director David Cronenberg recounted a witty story about how as a child he entered a promotional competition when the original The Fly (1958) came out, which challenged people to prove that the film’s premise was not scientifically possible. He succeeded – not a particularly hard task (see discussion of the problems inherent in the original at the above link), but was failed by the theatre management. 28 years later with this remake, Cronenberg was allowed the best possible comeuppance in a way that the theatre management of the time would never have believed possible.
  

The Fly 1986 came out amid a host of mid 1980s remakes of classic 1950s science-fiction films. In its own way, the original The Fly was a classic monster movie, but its science amok polemics and pitiful “help me, help me”’s were not enough to stand up in the 1980s; David Cronenberg realizes this but he is not interested in making any 1950s type of film. Rather than parodying, quoting or deconstructing the original, Cronenberg takes the basic idea and reworks it in much more fascinating directions. He has thrown out the substantial illogicities and implausibilities that came in the original’s script – that of a fly and a man ending up with either’s body parts jumbled up – and instead makes a much more credible story about the fusion between the two into a hybrid entity. His is a darker, inner vision of the story where the original idea has been colluded with Cronenberg’s frequent bodily horror obsessions. It is more like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) but with more slime.

David Cronenberg’s films are unique mad scientist films. In the 1930s and 40s, mad scientist films were filled with the shock of science going amok and of unleashed monsters wreaking devastating influences on society. In Cronenberg’s films, monstrosity and transformation always has an ambiguity. Cronenberg’s scientists and victims seem to throw themselves at the process of transformation and mutation with fascinated curiosity, ecstatically welcoming their fusion into Other – the sexual ecstasies found in the mutilation of human flesh by auto accident in Crash (1996), or of being taken over by fetish-creating parasites in Shivers (1975). Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle here looks on with a wryly amused air of scientific curiosity, keeping his fallen-off body parts in the bathroom and making sardonic comments about turning his medicine cabinet into “the Brundle Museum of Natural History.” Some people have read The Fly 1986 as a metaphor for AIDS, which a plausible case can be made for, although AIDS was only just emerging into the public spotlight when the film was made. Rather, the film seems to echo and mirror Cronenberg’s peculiar Manichean fascinations with the body as a battleground where the will can operate in one direction but the body can frequently rebel or be taken over by other forces – like the images of people being turned into human VCR’s in Videodrome (1983) or psychological repressions forcing themselves into expression in human flesh in The Brood (1979). For the title creature, Chris Walas created a triumphant mass of rubber latex – which runs all the way from a few unsightly hairs to full mechanical creatures. (Chris Walas won that year’s Academy Award for his work). Unlike its sequel The Fly II (1989), which was in fact directed by Walas, the film finds a character inside all the latex. Here Jeff Goldblum gives a joyous, live-wire performance, which adds a perverse streak of humour to the transformation. Goldblum has rarely been better in a part. 

Most fascinating is the weirdness with which Cronenberg and Jeff Goldbum take the obsession, turning Brundle literally, behaviourally into a twitching hyper-kinetic fly, needing to consume large amounts of sugar and stomach-churningly dealing with the problems of digesting solid foods. (Although, one illogical move has Goldblum scaling the walls and ceiling just like a fly would – flies are only able to do so by surface-tension and in having such a minimal body weight, something a human would be too big for). In the final vision, with the Brundelfly turned into a pitifully crying bio-mechanic fusion melded with the telepods, the film achieves a peculiar kind of poetic revulsion, as though it were taking classical mad scientist, creation and laboratory and dissolving them into one. 

There is a small tendency to go in for unnecessary gore that cheapens the film occasionally, particularly a dream scene where Geena Davis gives birth to giant slug. (One can also note Cronenberg in the dream sequence cameoing as a gynaecologist, a move that foreshadows the culmination of his gynaecological obsessions in his next film Dead Ringers [1988]). The beautiful pale photography of Mark Irwin and the dark, brooding score of Howard Shore is also worthy of note. 

David Cronenberg’s other films are:– Stereo (1969), a little-seen film about psychic powers experiments; Crimes of the Future (1970), a film about a future where people have become sterile; Shivers/They Came from Within/The Parasite Murders (1975) about parasites that turn people into sexual fetishists; Rabid (1977) about a vampiric skin graft; The Brood (1979), a remarkable film about experimental psycho-therapies; Fast Company (1979), a non-genre film about car racing; Scanners (1981), a film about psychic powers; Videodrome (1983) about reality-manipulating tv; The Dead Zone (1983), Cronenberg’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel about precognition; Dead Ringers (1988), Cronenberg’s greatest film, about two disturbed twin gynaecologists; M. Butterfly (1993), a non-genre film about a Chinese spy who posed as a woman to seduce a British diplomat; Crash (1996), Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel about the eroticism of car crashes; eXistenZ (1999), a disappointing film about Virtual Reality; Spider (2002), a subjective film takes place inside the mind of a mentally ill man; the thriller A History of Violence (2005) about an assassin hiding under a different identity; Eastern Promises (2007) about the Russian Mafia; A Dangerous Method (2011) about the early years of psychotherapy; and Cosmopolis (2012), a surreal vision of near-future economic collapse. Cronenberg has also made acting appearances in other people’s films, including as a serial killer psychologist in Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (1990); a Mafia hitman in To Die For (1995); a Mafia head in Blood & Donuts (1995); a member of a hospital board of governors in the medical thriller Extreme Measures (1996); as a gas company exec in Don McKellar’s excellent end of the world drama Last Night (1998); a priest in the serial killer thriller Resurrection (1999); and as a victim in the Friday the 13th film Jason X (2001). 

Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue has also delivered a number of genre scripts, including Psycho III (1986), DragonHeart (1996), Kull the Conqueror (1997) and Hercules (tv mini-series, 2005), as well as a host of Sherlock Holmes tv movies.

The routine sequel was The Fly II (1989). The original Fly movies were The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of the Fly (1965      

VINCENT PRICE: PATRICIA OWENS: THE FLY : STIILS GALLEY AND REVIEW

CAST:

Patricia Owens (Helene Delambre), Vincent Price (Francois Delambre), Al Hedison (Andre Delambre), Herbert Marshall (Inspector Charas), Charles Herbert (Philippe Delambre) 

PRODUCTION:

Director/Producer – Kurt Neumann, Screenplay – James Clavell, Based on the Short Story by George Langelaan, Photography – Karl Struss, Music – Paul Sawtell, Photographic Effects – L.B. Abbott, Makeup – Ben Nye, Production Design – Theobold Holsopple & Lyle R. Wheeler. Production Company – 20th Century Fox.  USA. 1958. 

SYNOPSIS:

The dead body of scientist Andre Delambre is found at his factory, his arm and head having been crushed by a hydraulic press. His wife Helene admits to having killed him. Andre’s brother Francois presses her and finally gets the incredible story. Andre was experimenting, trying to create a matter teleportation device. After initial failures, he was able to teleport inanimate objects and then lab animals. Next, Andre insisted on locking himself in the lab, saying something had gone wrong and keeping his head covered by a cloth. Communicating with Helene only by written notes, Andre told her it was vitally important that she find a white-headed fly. She eventually discovered the horrible truth – how Andre had decided to transmit himself through the device, not realising that a fly was caught in the booth with him. The two bodies emerging fused, meaning that Andre ended up with the fly’s head and one of its claws attached to his body, and the fly with Andre’s head and one of his arms attached to it.

COMMENTARY:

The Fly is one of the most memorable of all fifties sf/horror crossovers.The film has become a classic of the era, one that is often unjustly laughed at and held up to ridicule. It is however a classic and a fine monster movie.

The film features a script from James Clavell. Up until his death in 1994, Clavell was better known as the author of best-selling Asian themed novels like Tai-Pan (1966) and Shogun (1976). Not many seem to know that James Clavell spent his earlier pre-novelistic career as a film screenwriter – writing films such as Watusi (1959), The Great Escape (1963), 633 Squadron (1964) and The Satan Bug (1965) and even director, most notably of To Sir, With Love (1967). The Fly, adapted from George Langelaan’s short story, which first appeared in Playboy in 1957, was James Clavell’s first screen credit.

Clavell certainly makes some basic errors in reason. The physiological problems that might be presented by a fly with a human’s head on its body and in particular a human with a fly’s head on its’ body are never addressed. You keep wondering how Andre is able to think and clearly draw on his own memories and scientific expertise while he has a fly’s head attached to his shoulders. There are also the practical, scientific problems – a fly ingests air through its legs via a pressure system but these only work at microscopic levels and would need the force of a hurricane to be able to absorb air in order to breathe with a head at human size. 

Major suspension of disbelief is something critical to enjoying The Fly. That said and done, one finds an excellent little film. What James Clavell may lack as an entomologist or logician, he certainly does not in the ability to construct a strong and suspenseful story. The story is narrated as a flashback from the point-of-view of the wife. The lead up to the introduction of the titular mishap – using the flashback framework, with notes left outside the forebodingly closed laboratory door and Al Hedison only communicating with his face hidden under a cloth suggesting something has gone seriously wrong inside – is suspensefully sustained. In fact, James Clavell is so successful in building a sense of foreboding that the actual introduction of a not-too-frightening fly’s head is anticlimactic. The only misstep the script makes is in stopping for a momentarily heavy-winded dialogue on the ethics of science.

The film was directed by Kurt Neumann who made a number of other genre films in the 1950s. (See below for Kurt Neumann’s other titles). The Fly is the best of Kurt Neumann’s films. Neumann’s direction has that pedestrianness of all 50s science-fiction films but there remain scenes that hold a particularly unnerving eerieness – the disembodied meow of the teleported cat that fails to re-materialise; the desperate chase around the sitting room to catch the white-headed fly; the always remembered, often-laughed at ending where Herbert Marshall and Vincent Price sit not hearing Al Hedison’s pathetic cries of “help me”, trapped in a web before an oncoming spider. 

There were two ho-hum sequels Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of the Fly (1965). The remake was The Fly (1986), directed/written by David Cronenberg who reworked the story to make it a much more logically feasible study of a man mutating into a fly hybrid. This produced a mediocre sequel The Fly II (1989). The Fly was also spoofed in Monsters vs Aliens (2009) and Hotel Transylvania (2012).  

Director Kurt Neumann made a number of other genre films, along with light comedies and Westerns. He made several of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films – Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), Tarzan and the Leopard Man (1946) and Tarzan and the Huntress (1947) and one with Lex Barker Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953). In the 1950s, Neumann made Rocketship X-M (1950), one of the earliest films of the 50s science-fiction boom; the Arabian Nights fantasy Son of Ali Baba (1952); the mad scientist cheapie She Devil (1957); and Kronos (1957) about an alien energy-devouring machine. Neumann died the same year that The Fly came out.

Review:HERE
Images: Marcus Brooks

VINCENT PRICE: RETURN OF THE FLY: GALLERY AND REVIEW

CAST:

Vincent Price (Francoise Delambre), David Frankham (Alan Hinds), Brett Halsey (Philippe Delambre), Danielle De Metz (Cecile Bonnard), John Sutton (Inspector Beauchamp), Dan Seymour (Max Berthold)

PRODUCTION:

Director/Screenplay – Edward L. Bernds, Producer – Bernard Glasser, Photography (b&w) – Brydon Baker, Music – Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter, Makeup – Hal Lierly, Art Direction – John B. Mansbridge & Lyle R. Wheeler. Production Company – Associated Producers.  

 

SYNOPSIS:

After the funeral of his mother, Philippe Delambre demands that his Uncle Francois tell him about the experiments his father was involved in. Francois shows him but Philippe then disregards Francois’s warnings and starts his own experiments in matter transmission with the aid of his good friend Alan Hinds. However, Alan is in fact a wanted criminal on the run from international police and is intending to sell off plans of the matter transmitter. When police start closing in on him, Alan uses the transmitter to dispose of them. When Philippe finds out the truth, Alan throws him into the transmitter too, placing a fly, one of Philippe’s greatest fears, in as well. Philippe is rematerialized with a fly’s head and claw, while the fly comes out with Philippe’s head and arm.

COMMENTARY:

The original The Fly (1958) was one of the monster classics of the 1950s. It produced two sequels – this and Curse of the Fly (1965). While the original film was lavishly mounted for a 1950s sf/horror film, Return of the Fly has been made much more as a B support feature – where the original was in colour, for instance, this is made in black-and-white. Direction this time was handed over to Edward L. Bernds, a B-budget director who had made various Three Stooges and Bowery Boys efforts, as well as several B science-fiction films (see below). 

As sequels go, Return of the Fly is a fair effort on its own undemanding grounds. It is necessarily trapped by the very act of being a sequel. It lacks the same suspenseful structure and surprise element that James Clavell’s script had – we know where it is going to end up from the outset and as a result the pitiful screams of “help me” lose their impact a second time around. Still, the story has a degree of originality in the way it reintroduces the same themes, offering a plausible reason for Philippe to start his own experiments in matter transmission and an equally believable means whereby he gets to become a human-fly. There are some odd moments that achieve a nice ‘yechh’ effect – like the hamster that emerges from the transmitter with human hands and the really gross scene where David Frankham crushes the hamster under his foot. The fly has a head about three times larger this time but is not a whole lot more convincing. 

Director Edward L. Bernds made a number of genre films, including The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1955), Bowery to Bagdad (1955), Jungle Gents (1956), World Without End (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958), Spacemaster X-7 (1958), Valley of the Dragons (1961), The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962) and The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962).    

SOURCE:HERE
IMAGES: Marcus Brooks