The Fly

For the last few years, I have used October to give myself a viewing assignment: a different horror film each day. Now that I have escaped the real life horror of New Zealand’s public service, I intend to write a piece inspired by each film.

My twenty-second film is Kurt Neumann’s The Fly (1958).

In the past, the recurrance of nostalgia has tended to happen in 20-30 year cycles. Artists who had formative years in the `50s grew up to make the likes of Grease and Happy Days in the `70s and Back to the Future in the `80s. I’m not sure if that cycle has slowed since the Cold War (and history) ended but it feels like we’re well into the third decade of `80s nostalgia. Take Stranger Things (a show I hate featuring a cast of evil children), which is made by guys who don’t so much have `80s nostalgia as nostalia for `80s nostalgia. It’s a photocopy of a photocopy. As anyone who regularly attends retro screenings can attest, there is a huge bias in favour of this decade shared by every generation since the Baby Boomers (even those who don’t remember the `80s).

I don’t think the `80s was a particularly strong decade for film, although there are a few that I hold dear to my heart. One of these is 1986’s The Fly, one of the best films David Cronenberg ever made. I promise I am not directing any shade towards that film when I say that the outsized-prominence of `80s nostalgia in our culture means that the 1958 original has been overlooked.

From the opening scene in which a man is crushed by hydraulic press, this is much gnarlier and grislier than one might expect. Friend of the Substack Vincent Price plays François, the brother of the dead man André (Al Hedison) who tries to uncover the circumstances that led to that squishing. Much of the film takes place in flashbacks narrated by André’s wife Hélène (Patricia Owens) who tells the story of a scientist who invents teleportation but faces gruesome repercussions.

The creepiness of this film is underscored by the romantic relationship at the centre. The pathos that Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis lend to the remake may be unbeaten but there’s real sweetness here as well. The married couple clearly love each other and when André’s obsessive search for knowledge starts to get the better of him, it hurts. There’s a devastating scene where André, already partially transformed, fights against his fly half to scrawl ‘LOVE YOU’ on the blackboard in his lab.

I understand why Cronenberg was drawn to this film. The science fiction narratives of the `50s lent themselves well to body horror which was at its peak in the `80s: not just The Fly but also The Blob and The Thing from Another World. Moreover, the film set in Montreal (interestingly, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms also included a sojourn to French Canada) and maybe the Canadian angle appealed to Cronenberg. But so much of what is great about that remake is present here.