Once
in a blue moon, a great science fiction film of the 1950s will get a modern day
makeover that actually manages to surpass the source which inspired it. Such was the case with John Carpenter’s
remake of Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World and nowhere is that truer
than David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 science fiction
horror classic The Fly. Based upon the 1957 Playboy Magazine short
story of the same name by George Langelaan, The
Fly told the terrifying and tragic story of a scientist who invents a
teleportation device which accidentally scrambles his DNA with that of a
housefly. While both told tales of
scientific breakthroughs gone awry, focusing on the physical and mental
transformation of its shape shifting mad scientist as well as the grief of the
woman watching the man she loves become a mere shadow of his former self, how
each film explored those themes couldn’t have been more different or extreme. Where one film depicted the switch of a man’s
head with a fly’s body, the other presented the fusion of human and insect as a
cancer spreading like wildfire, infecting every ounce of the poor man’s being
until there’s no humanity left. There’s
debate to this day by horror purists over which film is the superior of the
two, including but not limited to the 1958 film’s star Vincent Price lambasting
Cronenberg’s remake for the choking amount of grotesquerie on display. Others view each film as products of their
era, although an argument can be made for the 1986 film’s timelessness versus
the dated CinemaScope venture from 1958.
With that, The Movie Sleuth paves the way for another controversial
movie battle in which two films cut from the same cloth will be debated over
which individual version of The Fly is
stronger than the other.
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| Dude. Get me some garbage to munch on. The weed is really kicking in. |
The Fly – 1958
Scientist
Andre Delambre (David Hedison) is found dead with his head crushed between a
hydraulic press. His wife Helene
(Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime but won’t provide a motive while
displaying a peculiar fixation with flies.
Determined to unveil the truth behind Andre’s death, his brother
Francois (Vincent Price) plays along with Helene’s fixations and through
extended flashback we learn the true reasons for the murder were far more
horrifying than we could have possibly imagined. Thus begins Kurt Neumann’s The Fly, a science fiction horror
classic that forever burned the words ‘Help me!
Help me!’ into the minds of moviegoers forever. Playing into Frankenstein tropes such as the mad scientist drifting further away
from his loved ones in the pursuit of discovery, sophisticated machinery with
bright lights and loud sound effects and finally the monster lurking in the
dark, The Fly like Alien is a B movie with an A-list
production behind it. It also manages to
prey on our own fear of insects and begs the question as to whether or not
technological innovation is necessarily in our best interest.
Shot
in CinemaScope color 2.35:1 widescreen with one of the earliest 35mm films to
utilize 4 track surround sound, The Fly opens
on silence as our ears follow the sound of a housefly buzzing about the
room. While stereo and surround sound
was becoming more commonplace in film around then, this was one of the earliest
examples of purely directional use of sound as the fly buzzing travels from
speaker to speaker, in front of and behind the viewer. There’s also the ambience of the hydraulic
press and the otherworldly noise generated by the teleportation device, making
this one of the earliest examples of sound engineering for a film. While the charm of Vincent Price no doubt
factors into film’s enduring popularity, this is most certainly Patricia Owens’
picture as she carries a majority of the film in flashback and confronts the
monster herself. Much like Mystery of the Wax Museum with Fay Wray,
the terrifying payoff comes when the beast is unmasked and revealed by the
central heroine with the buildup only amplifying the unbearable tension.
The Fly – 1986
David
Cronenberg’s The Fly might in fact be
the finest remake of a major film ever produced, managing to surpass the
original both artistically and technically.
Starring Jeff Goldblum in the role of his career alongside Geena Davis,
the film plays in linear fashion (no flashbacks but a grisly nightmare sequence
appears) until reaching its logical conclusion whether an audience could take
the pain or not. Jettisoning the idea of
an instant monster in favor of a gradual physical as well as mental
transformation, Cronenberg’s take on The
Fly has far more in common with Michael Haneke’s Amour than George Langelaan’s short story. Using Langelaan’s plot as a framing device,
Cronenberg imbues The Fly with all of
his obsessions from abject body horror, psychosexuality and the loss of
individuality. Rather than going for
startling jump scares as with the 1958 film, the new Fly instead watches it’s subject slowly slip into madness, murder
and eventually death, all filmed from a clinical, at times gynecological and
ultimately an intensely precise perspective.
Ignoring nearly all traces of the 1958 film, Cronenberg forms with The Fly a sterilized laboratory with
Jeff Goldblum as his rat, beautiful and innocent at first before disease forces
him into the shadows like a leper. Produced
by Mel Brooks (of all people) and rewritten by Cronenberg himself, The Fly is that rare special effects
driven sideshow whose director in lab coat manages to keep the technological
breakthroughs from interfering from his singular vision. Try to imagine what The Fly might have been like if Tim Burton (who was an early
consideration) directed it. It would
have been a campy romp tipping its hat to creature features of the 1950s. In Cronenberg’s hands, it’s a deadly serious
metaphor for what it means to care for a loved one well after physical and
mental breakdown have transformed them from someone you know into a
stranger.
Key
to the film’s artistic success and emotional complexity is a daring and
heartfelt performance by Jeff Goldblum.
Always a great character actor in bit parts over the years, The Fly is the greatest performance
Goldblum has ever given. Unafraid of the
makeup which gradually accumulates until we no longer recognize Goldblum’s
voice and facial characteristics, this is a performance which, like Sigourney
Weaver’s performance in Aliens, proves
that science fiction horror can most certainly prominently feature fine acting
which elevates it far above its B movie origins. Equally strong is Geena Davis as the gentle
and loving woman who cannot help but cry for the soul inside her lover’s body
despite his eventual complete loss of his humanity. One of the strongest and most telling images
in the film comes near the end as the fully transformed Goldblum crawls to
Davis and looks up at her with a lamenting groan, begging for death. Outside of Carlo Rambaldi’s work on E.T: The Extra Terrestrial, Gremlins creature effects maestro Chris
Walas’ human fly represents one of the few times a prosthetic alien creature is
able to elicit sympathy and terrible sadness in the viewer. The film is structured with a gradual tonal
shift over the course of the movie driven by cinematographer Mark Irwin whose
restrained and precise cinematography gradually grows more and more deranged
and surrealistic with heavy blues and reds flooding the frame. Of course the mood of The Fly wouldn’t be the dark and depressing tale that it was
without the haunting and occasionally terrifying score by regular collaborator
Howard Shore. Take for instance the
scene where Goldblum is almost completely transformed into a human insect and
he unravels on a demented rant about ‘insect politics’. The score plays softly in the background with
overwhelming despair before roaring to a grief stricken howl. The scene itself is very strong but the score
pushes it right over into being monumentally powerful.
The Verdict
No
competition here. David Cronenberg’s
1986 reimagining of The Fly is the
obvious winner of this Movie Sleuth battle.
While the 1958 The Fly is
still a classic science fiction tale of science gone awry, Cronenberg’s The Fly is an auteur driven masterpiece
which uses an absurd and potentially hilarious premise to hammer home very
tangible fears and sorrows of dying. In
other words, it took a simplistic idea and turned it into a tale about so much
more and beyond. Not to mention the
performances are passionate and full of raw emotion and where the edges of the
1958 film have softened with age, the 1986 film remains just as shocking and
despairing as it did when it was first released. As previously mentioned, the film has a lot
in common with Michael Haneke’s Amour in
terms of observing the dying process of a loved one slipping away in mind and
spirit. But what you may not be aware of
is that Amour actually drew
influences from Cronenberg’s The Fly in
its depiction of caring for someone else as time and time gradually drive the
person in need out of their mind. What
could have been just another souped up remake of a classic thriller instead was
crafted into an enduring work of art that people still talk about to this day,
one which has lost none of its ability to horrify and heartbreak in equal
measure. And for those of you who think
you know Jeff Goldblum, you haven’t seen his astonishing performance in David
Cronenberg’s fusion of mainstream science fiction with his uncompromising
portrait of human disintegration.
- Andrew Kotwicki