For its 40th anniversary, Matt Konopka looks back at the timeless horror of ‘The Fly’ and why the film still buzzes today.
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
I find fans tend to fear the remake. We worry any new iteration of our favorite films “won’t get it”. We mourn for “originality”. Some even weep at the thought of a new take somehow swatting the original down like a pesky insect. But that’s the wrong way to view them. Remakes are an opportunity to expand on old ideas for a modern audience. They’re a chance to take what worked about a story and transform it into something else, like a caterpillar entering a cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly. Best of all, they inform a fresh audience of the original’s existence, giving new life to that story.
In horror, there are countless remakes that not only prove themselves worthwhile, but outdo what came before. Think films like The Blob (1988), The Thing (1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and, of course, David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986). Forty years ago, the master of body horror signed on to reimagine the Vincent Price classic. And, forty years ago, he unleashed a monster movie masterpiece that has endured for decades thanks to a heavy helping of nauseating practical effects, tragic themes, and devastating performances.
Based on the 1958 film starring Price, Cronenberg’s The Fly opens on the gentle meeting of journalist Veronica (Geena Davis) and awkward scientist Seth (Jeff Goldblum). Seth promises to show Veronica an invention that “will change the world as we know it”. Unable to quiet her curiosity, she takes the stranger up on his offer and follows him to the warehouse where he lives. There, she discovers he wasn’t kidding. Seth has invented teleportation pods. But the pods struggle to transport living things. Instead, they leave behind a bloody mess. Veronica agrees to document Seth’s research and write a tell-all book. Soon, a romance forms between the two. Until one night, Seth suspects his new love is cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend/editor, Stathis (John Getz). Upset and drunk, he enters the pods himself, unaware he’s been joined by a simple housefly. Now, Seth is turning into something that has never existed. He’s becoming…Brundle-Fly.
For his Fly, Cronenberg strives for what the best remakes do by telling a story almost entirely unlike the previous version. Whereas the Price film plays more like a silly slice of sci-fi camp (minus one terrifying moment during the ending), Cronenberg’s take couldn’t be further from that tone.
The stylistic switch becomes immediately apparent in Howard Shore’s score that plays over the opening credits. The composer lures us in like moths to the flame with yearning notes that build into booming bellows of pain and horror. Not unlike the terror that befalls the characters, which begins so small they hardly notice it. Cronenberg has noted before that he sees the title credits as easing viewers into a dream (an observation I happen to agree with). The filmmaker accomplishes that beautifully with The Fly. But what lies ahead is no pleasant dream. The audience doesn’t know it yet, but we’ve just entered a sickening nightmare of horrors that only become more real as we age.
An undisputed master of his craft, Cronenberg understands that the horror of any situation works best when we care about the characters. So, the filmmaker doesn’t start with scares or some nasty fly creature ripping open bodies. Instead, we’re invited into the gradual romance between Veronica and Seth. And, my god, does that make what proceeds hurt ten-fold. Even now, I’m listening to the soundtrack and tearing up at the thought of it.
Neither Davis nor Goldblum were nominated for an Academy Award for their roles, but they should’ve been. The two have a natural chemistry that buzzes. Their love feels genuine. Sweet. Easy. The most rewarding romances often are. I have a hard time believing Seth hasn’t had much experience with the flesh, as he puts it. I mean, come on, look at him. But the warmth between the two? That I never doubt for a second.
A Man That Can’t Be Fixed
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Each actor provides nuances that may go unnoticed the first couple of watches yet deepen the emotional journey the more times you see The Fly. With Veronica, Davis shows us a woman falling head over heels in love. One scene has the two in bed, where she calls Seth cute, only for him to reply, “Am I?” She lets out the softest of sighs over his innocence before giving him a deep kiss. She can’t resist him, and I can’t blame her.
Goldblum, on the other hand, litters his performance with small tics. At first, they’re charming quirks. But, as the fly takes over, those small twitches and breaks in speech become horrific. We’re watching a man lose control of himself as he becomes a shadow of who he was. That transformation is what makes The Fly one for the ages.
Made during the AIDS crisis, many critics believed at the time that Seth’s slow disintegration was a metaphor for the deadly disease. That surprised Cronenberg, who viewed the change as something a bit simpler than that. Rather than represent one single condition, Seth’s transformation is more a terrifying interpretation of age, disease, cancer…unavoidable debilitations of the body that tear the victim apart until there’s nothing left.
I regret to say that I’ve seen the effects of such diseases a few times in my life (fuck cancer). The relentlessness of it is unimaginable. You spend every second of every day wishing you could shoo it away. But you can’t, and it kills you. The only thing worse than watching a loved one go through such a thing is going through it yourself. The Fly depicts both.
Be Very Afraid
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Through Davis, we become the observer. The signs of Seth’s disease start small. Strange hairs on his body. Loads of sugar in his coffee. Things you may shrug off as simply odd. And then his face begins to change. He gets angrier. Meaner. More violent. Before she knows it, he hardly even looks like a person anymore. Surely not the man she fell in love with. The painful truth of her experience comes in the form of a shocking new change each time she returns to Seth. Diseases like cancer work quicker than you can imagine. One week, a person looks like themselves. A month, maybe two later, they’re skin and bones. Nothing I could write here could properly prepare anyone for that kind of shock. But The Fly comes as close as possible.
Seth shows us the other side of disease. The victim’s side. Those aforementioned small changes quickly turn to deformations. His hair falls out. His teeth break off. He loses an ear. The moment his fingernails all peel away kicks me in the gut when he says to himself, “Is this how it starts? Am I dying?” It hits because it’s an experience most of us have either had or will have. I’ve had my cancer scares where I’ve wondered if the end was approaching. The older you get, the more your own body betrays you. That’s the ultimate tragedy of The Fly.
Cronenberg’s early work mostly dealt with the flesh. Rabid…Videodrome…The Brood…explorations of what the body was capable of. For me, The Fly is his final word on the subject. After years of fascination with the flesh, his remake expresses a filmmaker who has concluded that, for all the wonders of the human body, it fails us. It breaks down, weakens, changes, until one day we look in the mirror and don’t recognize our own face. A downer observation, I know, but it’s why The Fly resonates so deeply. Because, in one way or another, what happens to Veronica and Seth happens to us all. It doesn’t matter how many years go by; It’ll always be scary. The older you get, the scarier The Fly gets.
With few exceptions, the greatest monster movies have always been those that suffer tragedy more monstrous than the creatures themselves. The Wolf Man and the curse of losing control; Frankenstein’s Monster and the inability to find meaningful companionship; The Fly and the shredding of a relationship and the couple in it before they even have a chance. It gives us an intimate tale of a monster, while also unleashing mind-blowing practical effects.
A Disease with a Purpose
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Created by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis, the effects work to heighten the ugliness of Seth’s disease. As I’ve said, conditions like cancer aren’t pretty. And The Fly, well, it presents such things in their most horrific form possible.
Our first glimpse at the gruesomeness of it all comes after Seth tests the pods with that first baboon. Unable to understand the flesh and recreate it, the poor thing ends up an inside-out pile of baboon tartare. It’s the first moment of horror we experience in the film. Some filmmakers would tend not to go so heavy on the gore right away. Cronenberg isn’t like most filmmakers. By showing us such a gruesome image so early on, he preps the audience by saying, get out now if you can’t stomach it, because you haven’t seen anything yet.
He’s not exaggerating, either. The Fly is a horror show of body fluids, tumors, and the shriveled pieces of one poor bastard. Goldblum spent hours in the makeup chair. That time paid off with utterly hideous makeup, one that allows the actor’s devastating expressions to come through wonderfully. There’s a reason the film won the 1987 Oscar for Best Makeup (a rare win for the genre). And that’s before getting into the stunning, towering fly that eventually sheds Seth’s body like a cocoon. Not a beautiful butterfly, but a terrifying monster.
Cronenberg’s vision has claimed the title it deserves as a top-tier remake. In my mind, it’s a top-five creature feature as well. Few films are as brilliant, poetic, heartbreaking, and outright terrifying as The Fly. So, here’s to forty years of a classic, and forty more to come. If I’m still alive and kicking then, I know it will strike a greater fear in me at that point than it ever has before.
Until then, here’s to living it up with a little coffee with my sugar.
