The Fly (1958)Splitting the atom is opening Pandora's Box...and what monsters may emerge from that knowledge. That is the underlying terror which haunts The Fly (1958), a post-atomic age horror movie about the implicit dangers of technology and its capacity for warping reality. When beloved wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), is charged for the murder of her scientist husband, Andre (David Hedison)--supported by her own confession--she feebly feigns insanity to conceal a more gruesome truth. When her son, Philippe (Charles Herbert), lets it slip to Andre's surviving brother, Francois (Vincent Price), that she was seeking a fly with a "white head and a strange arm", the terrible secret is forced from her, and her testimony a tale of the bizarre.
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The Fly is remembered as a classic monster movie about a man who fools with technology designed to transport himself from one teleportation device to another, only to inadvertently have his "atoms" enmeshed with that of a housefly. While The Fly is a horror movie, it is also a love story, a drama where the relationship between Helene and Andre is shattered on the altar of "Science". And there are moments which could also be described as darkly comic, like the seemingly insane hunt for the white-headed fly, and even a subtle joke including one of the tanks in the factory where Andre is discovered being labeled "SPID R", foreshadowing the chilling climax of The Fly. Even the opening credits, which play a medley of music from the film, is interlaced with pauses and the buzzing of a fly. While the big reveal of the mutation which happened to Andre is delayed until late into The Fly, between the timing of Andre's near-total isolation in his laboratory, Philippe's observation about the strange fly he caught, and Andre's bizarre eating habits and insistence on wearing a cloth over his head, the audience has no doubt already formed a picture in their mind as to just what horrors await; the reveal is just the confirmation of all of our fears. The most memorable moments are the great, multi-faceted scream of Helene at the reveal of Andre's calamity, and of course, the screams from the elusive fly from the spider's web of "help me, help me". These climactic moments come after a slow burn of tension and anxiety, ratcheted up over the course of Helene's testimony, her reason for committing her husband to such a grisly end by means of a hydraulic press. Even before any of the characters are established, The Fly has the guts to open with hardly any exposition at all to justify this traumatic scene, as a nightwatchman catches Helene fleeing from the scene of the crime, leaving him (and us) to draw our own conclusions. Our suspicions are always placed on the back foot, between Helene's forthright confession at the incident to her emotional fixation on capturing the mysterious white-headed fly, leading those like Francois to suspect that Helene is keeping the reality of this terrible moment from them, protecting them as Andre tried to protect her from the truth. The truth also just so happens to be the antagonist of The Fly--the pursuit of forbidden knowledge.
Released in an era when the fear of atomic war was a reality, The Fly capitalizes on establishing science as a force of potentially godlike power, one which mankind is ill-equipped to wrangle yet, if ever. Andre's experiments are a consuming hobby, and even a selfish one. Although Andre is amiable, his experimentation is like an addiction; he spends weeks secluded in his private lab beneath the quaint homestead of his family, engaged in dark rituals with Frankenstein-like equipment strewn about. His proclamation about the merits of his invention to provide food and transportation to the world is noble, but he refuses to acknowledge his own shortcomings, obsessed with the perfection of his work and adamant not to involve others in the birthing of his opus. This obsession causes him to do things in opposition to his character--as addictions are want to do--such as his ill-advised experiment on the house cat, Dandelo, a mistake he doesn't reveal to Helene until he's already convinced he's corrected it. One suspects that even Andre, deep down, doubts the reliability of his science, when he first displays its results to Helene by using a cheap candy dish, as though he expected something to backfire. The comparison Andre makes between his transportation device is to the way television transmits data across space, another subtle psychological poke into the subconscious of 1950s-era movie-goers, suggesting that within each of their homes, that cathode ray tube might be a device as horrible as the monstrous teleporter featured in The Fly, ready to mutate them into centaur monsters at the flick of a switch. Even the goggles Andre and Helene wear to shield their eyes are like those worn when nuclear explosions are detonated, another source of sci-fi monstrosities (according to monster movies). Andre's tragic accident is based on his limited understanding--something he acknowledges to Helene early on. His genius runs too fast for the speed of the world as a whole. He describes "atoms" as the building blocks of matter, but in the interest of not overwhelming the audience (via Helene) with scientific jargon, it's limited to that, as opposed to a symposium on DNA and genome mapping. Helene's response at the revelation of such a scientific wonder is still relevant today in an age where wireless internet and 3D printing are becoming commonplace--that it is all going "too fast". Andre's attempts to assuage her anxiety are visibly hollow, as he declares these "miracles" of technology to be "facts"; his hubris makes for an unfortunate testament.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic sci-fi/monster movie, with a paranoid undercurrent of the dangers of science unbound. It is especially effective at generating tension by stoking our fears about these dangers, and then delivering on that promise.
Released in an era when the fear of atomic war was a reality, The Fly capitalizes on establishing science as a force of potentially godlike power, one which mankind is ill-equipped to wrangle yet, if ever. Andre's experiments are a consuming hobby, and even a selfish one. Although Andre is amiable, his experimentation is like an addiction; he spends weeks secluded in his private lab beneath the quaint homestead of his family, engaged in dark rituals with Frankenstein-like equipment strewn about. His proclamation about the merits of his invention to provide food and transportation to the world is noble, but he refuses to acknowledge his own shortcomings, obsessed with the perfection of his work and adamant not to involve others in the birthing of his opus. This obsession causes him to do things in opposition to his character--as addictions are want to do--such as his ill-advised experiment on the house cat, Dandelo, a mistake he doesn't reveal to Helene until he's already convinced he's corrected it. One suspects that even Andre, deep down, doubts the reliability of his science, when he first displays its results to Helene by using a cheap candy dish, as though he expected something to backfire. The comparison Andre makes between his transportation device is to the way television transmits data across space, another subtle psychological poke into the subconscious of 1950s-era movie-goers, suggesting that within each of their homes, that cathode ray tube might be a device as horrible as the monstrous teleporter featured in The Fly, ready to mutate them into centaur monsters at the flick of a switch. Even the goggles Andre and Helene wear to shield their eyes are like those worn when nuclear explosions are detonated, another source of sci-fi monstrosities (according to monster movies). Andre's tragic accident is based on his limited understanding--something he acknowledges to Helene early on. His genius runs too fast for the speed of the world as a whole. He describes "atoms" as the building blocks of matter, but in the interest of not overwhelming the audience (via Helene) with scientific jargon, it's limited to that, as opposed to a symposium on DNA and genome mapping. Helene's response at the revelation of such a scientific wonder is still relevant today in an age where wireless internet and 3D printing are becoming commonplace--that it is all going "too fast". Andre's attempts to assuage her anxiety are visibly hollow, as he declares these "miracles" of technology to be "facts"; his hubris makes for an unfortunate testament.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic sci-fi/monster movie, with a paranoid undercurrent of the dangers of science unbound. It is especially effective at generating tension by stoking our fears about these dangers, and then delivering on that promise.