Director: David Cronenberg
Writers: George Langelaan, Charles Edward Pogue
Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz
Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/3iuTSMx
Synopsis
Seth Brundle is trying to impress a girl at a convention. Her name is Veronica, and he’s very persistent. He claims he’s working on something that’ll change the world as we know it. He finally talks her into going back to his place to see his work. On the drive there, he mentions that he hates vehicles and often gets motion sickness. They go to his lab, a big, dirty place in a warehouse somewhere.
There’s two big things there that she says look like “designer phone booths.” He turns on his equipment and explains that they are his “telepods.” He puts her stocking in the machine and uses his voice to activate the machine. It disappears from one telepod and reappears in the other. It’s a teleport machine. He gets upset when he realizes she’s a journalist, which should have been obvious from the beginning.
Her publisher, Stathis, thinks it a trick; he doesn’t believe it’s real. He convinces her to wait, since he can only teleport inanimate objects. His machine fails terribly when he tries to teleport living things. Veronica goes home after this and finds Stathis in her apartment; they are former lovers, and he used to live with her. She throws him out, but he won’t give his key back. He’s a creep.
Brundle and Veronica start working together. She interviews him during his tests. The machine turns a baboon inside-out. They quickly start turning their clothes inside-out and doing all kinds of things to each other. Having sex gives him and idea. He adjusts the machine, and now it works. Finally, he can teleport living things!
Stathis and Veronica have an argument over the story. While they’re busy, Brundle gets drunk and puts himself into the telepod. We hear a fly buzzing around in the lab. What could go wrong? When he comes out of the other telepod, there’s no fly. Where did it go?
Almost immediately, Brundle starts doing all kinds of complicated acrobatic things that there’s no way he should be able to do. He thinks teleporting has improved him, but it’s also made him talk non-stop and use a ton of sugar in his coffee. He’s super hyped up and starting to act crazy. Brundle goes into town and challenges a couple of guys to an arm wrestling contest. He ends up breaking the guy’s wrist. He gets a girl and takes her back to his lab. He’s about to force her into the machine when Veronica comes in and breaks things up.
Veronica explains that he looks bad; he smells bad. The hairs in his back, when analyzed, are not human. They may be insect hairs. He thinks she’s just trying to bring him down. He throws her out. After she leaves, he looks himself over in the mirror and starts puling out his own fingernails. He starts to realize that something really is wrong with him. He checks the machine’s records and finds out about the fly that went into the telepod with him. Brundle’s been gene-spliced with the fly.
Four weeks pass. Brundle calls Veronica; he needs to see her. He’s barely recognizable and walks with two canes. He explains what happened. His ear falls off as he explains.
The next time she sees him, he’s feeling much better and can now walk on the ceiling. He realizes his affliction has a purpose; he’s turning into something new– a Brundlefly. Not long after, Veronica finds out that she’s pregnant with Brundle’s baby. The question is when did this happen, before or after he began to change? She dreams she has a miscarriage, but it comes out alive and looks like a giant maggot.
Meanwhile, Brundlefly’s teeth fall out, and he puts them in the cabinet with his other discarded body parts. He knows his mind is starting to change and the insect is taking over; “I’ll hurt you if you stay,” he explains.
Veronica wants an abortion, and she wants it tonight! Brundle, however, overhears their discussion. Stathis gets his doctor friend to agree to do the procedure that night. Brundle breaks through the window, grabs her, and carries her off.
Stathis goes to Brundle’s lab with a shotgun. Brundle surprises him. He pukes on Stathis’ hand, which melts it. He then removes his foot the same way. Stathis passes out from the shock.
Brundle has modified his machine to take two people and merge them together into a third combined being. He expects her humanity to weaken the fly DNA inside him. However, just then most of what’s left of Brundle falls apart, and what’s left isn’t very human-looking at all. He throws her into Pod B, he climbs into Pod A, and the countdown continues.
Stathis wakes up, crawls over to the machine and shoots the cabling going into Veronica’s telepod. Brundle opens his pod, starts to walk out, and then the machine teleports him and part of the pod into the third chamber. Veronica is OK, but Brundlefly and the telepod have merged. Let’s just say there are some bugs to work out of the system…
Commentary
This film is 34 years old, but it holds up surprisingly well, even the special effects and computer props look good.
It takes the original 1958 “The Fly” story and enhances it and gives a lot more detail to the process and the transformation. In the original film, the transformation was instantaneous, but here, the transformation is the main thing– all the horror comes from his slow evolution into a monstrous thing. There’s a lot more exposition and explanation in this one as well. The DNA-splicing angle makes sense and is more or less believable to someone not a geneticist. At least they tried to explain it all reasonably.
I kept wondering why Stathis had to “arrange” for an abortion, when abortion was completely legal in 1986. Turns out, the film is set in Canada, where abortion was illegal until 1988 except in certain cases of danger to the mother, which would have been hard to explain in this particular freaky situation.