| The Fly (1958) |
Dir: Kurt Neumann
Cast: Vincent Price, David Hedison, Patricia Owens
(Spoilers)
If You like movies about men turning into insect hybrids but don’t like watching Jeff Goldblum throw up, than this is your film. Adapted from George Langelaan’s short story, The Fly is that classic tale of a man that tampers with science, then becomes fly, gets horribly killed and so on, but with some unexpected twists and turns along the way.
The film opens when our lead scientist Andre Delambre’s (David Hedison) remains are found in a hydraulic press. His wife Helene is found guilty of his murder. She is also obsessed with a particular white fly but we’ll address that later. So she tells her “story” that her husband Andre had been working on a transporter device. Desperate to finish the project Andre eventually turned to using himself as the machine’s test subject but uh oh, what happens when a fly gets in the machine? Abra Cadaver he’s become a monster and soon this monster side stars to take over his mind.
What’s great is that it’s a fairly familiar premise approached in an unconventional way. From the film’s sequencing to how it’s paced, it’s what most monster movies wish they could be “unpredictable”. You may already know the fate of the monster but there’s a lot more to it. (More Spoilers) For the Fly head monster wasn’t the only thing to come out of the transporter, there is another… And it’s revealed in one of the most disturbing endings to a horror flick I can recall.
Remember that white fly? Well it’s discovered that it is in fact a fly with Andre’s head and the moment Andre’s brother Francois (Vincent Price) discovers the abomination you’ll be shaking in your lab coat. The disturbing shriek of “Help Me! Help Me!” as Andre becomes prey in a spider’s web, that shit is some freaky stuff. If you like the Jeff Goldblum/David Cronenberg version I suggest you check out where it all started, it may not be as slimy but it’s just as unsettling.