The Fly Review

Today we watched a film called "The Fly" to help us with our metamorphosis project. Here is my review of the film.

                                                        
The Fly is a 1958 horror movie starring David Hedison as Seth Brundle, the enthusiastic scientist. He is always hard at work on his latest invention, a teleportation pod, which he is very excited about. After having several successful experiments with teleporting objects and a guinea pig, Brundle gets a bit ahead of himself and gets into the pod to teleport himself! Carelessly he gets in without checking to see if he's the only one inside. This is where the style of the movie changes from a happy family movie to a gruesome horror flick.

I have mixed views about this film. A few things I liked about it were that it wasn’t just your typical blood-splatting-everywhere type or horror movie, it had imagination which made a good twist of the story.  It introduced the audience to the characters first in order to get some insight into how they live normally; this can make the audience feel a sense of attachment to the characters, which in turn makes the climax of the film all the better.
I would say the film was a love story/comedy which brought in the horror factor that would ultimately test how much Geena loved Brundle.

“But as anyone who has seen the Price version knows, the film is dated, campy, filled with bad science and even worse lines. More than anything, it was the great idea that made the movie a classic”

                                                                     

I partly agree with this quote- yes the film is dated and filled with bad science, but the science of the film isn’t the reason people came to watch it. People don’t read the film breakdown and go “Oh this film is about a teleportation pod, maybe I shall watch this so I can go home and make my own!” now do they? The characters all played their parts convincingly enough to make them believable to the naked eye e.g. the scientist’s theories and explanations of his findings.
Anyway I also agree that it was probably the idea overall that made this film a classic, but I do think this reviewer should be more appreciative and not so harsh.

“The scientific basis of this movie is pure rubbish, as there is no way that insect and human parts could biologically interact with each other. The result of such a mixture would be instantly dead in real life.”- Author drmality-1

This film was written from imagination and creativity, this was Kurt Neumann’s take of what a half man half fly hybrid would be like. I wouldn’t for one second believe that a fly could actually be fused with a human being, unless perhaps I was a child (which most likely wouldn’t be allowed to watch this film anyway). I think this person looked upon this a bit too seriously.

What I didn’t like about the movie is the ending. If it was made in the world of today it would probably have had a sadder ending (since it IS a horror movie.) The end was basically too happy. Yes, even though the mutated fly did get devoured uncle still got what he wanted and Geena didn’t get locked up!

This was a quote from classic-horror.com talking about some similarities The Fly has with another film of the era called “Edgar Allen Poe”:-

“The similarity means that you’re not going to see buckets of blood throughout the film, and there’s not a high body count. There also aren’t literal lurking monsters present most of the time. Instead, there’s a gradual, entrapping progression into an amazingly intriguing and literate story, told primarily through the eyes of an innocent bystander (Francois), and a profound horror in the psychological implications of a tragic series of events. That might rule out some horror fans right away, even fans of the Cronenberg Fly.”

I agree with this statement which is why I will say the film wasn’t really for me. I think this is mostly because it’s just too outdated for me; I’m used to the stuff of today. I would have enjoyed it more if I watched it in the era when it was released. Also I don’t think it really lived up to its genre, being horror, because throughout the film there was not one bit that scared me. The reviewer whoo i quoted just above says this point would rule out horror fans right away which wouldn’t surprise me too much. Horror is generally about seeing blood, gore, zombies and tragic events so without this, what are we watching exactly?

Overall I would rate this film a 6/10.