Exploring the Sequels

# 16 The Fly 2

Unexpected parenting and raising a little brundle of joy on the fly.

David Cronenberg’s masterpiece of metaphor balanced commercial appeal with the director’s esoteric and prophetic fascination of biology always blind drunkenly bedding technology to birth a Petrie dish, blending adaptations and viruses that inevitably occur in such unnatural matrimony. As father philosopher optimum in this sub genre, The Fly is his gooiest and most balanced achievement in fleshing out cinema’s ultimate body of work in the art of body horror.

With Cronenberg moving on to direct Dead Ringers, The Fly’s special effect’s coordinator, Chris Walas (Gremlins, Raiders of the Lost Ark), took a seat in the director’s chair to focus on a more straight forward story less focused on body horror as a muse to metaphors but still containing its own heartbreakingly thoughtful elements on never truly knowing our parents and where we come from with masterful make up and practical effects.

Stage 1…The Egg, beginning of the cycle

The Fly 2 (1989) picks up after the death of Seth Brundle as a different actor playing Ronnie (Saffron Henderson), gives birth to their son at Bartok Industries in a large, sterile, observatory/operating room and immediately dies due to complications as her baby is delivered. Ronnie’s progeny is contained within a viscid, insect like cocoon and lacerated open revealing a human baby slightly older in appearance to a direct newborn. CEO Anton Bartok (Lee Richardson) considers himself to be the baby’s surrogate father and names the child, Martin. Martin lives in a designated sector of the facility and is “raised” and studied by a team of wildly cold and hateful scientists with the covert expectation and anticipation that one day Martin will succumb to a like father/like son metamorphosis himself.

Stage 2…Larva, Brundle maggot phase

Martin not only ages physically at a rapid rate compared to “normal” human children he also contains an almost unmeasurable intellect easily excelling in areas as diverse yet relative as language, mathematics, and some x and 0 80’s era sci fi computer science that appears to even surpass his father’s abilities. At age two he presents in appearance as an emotionally intelligent ten year old boy and by age five (the movie’s present), Martin embodies the physique and mind of a twenty year old genius (Eric Stolz). Martin has developed kind, curious, and unbelievably brilliant, but sheltered, isolated, and lonely.

Stage 3…The Pupal, Brundle transformation

At his fifth birthday party, Bartok knowing that his team has failed at unlocking the secret of Seth Brundle’s telepods these last few years, enlists Martin in taking over his father’s work to uncover the missing link so Bartok Industries can take humankind’s greatest invention and revolutionize two hundred thousand years of transportation down to a matter of seconds.

Martin is hesitant to accept as the telepods pose great traumatic memories for him. At age two and deeply despondent, he snuck into an adjacent animal test subject lab at night and befriended a beautiful golden retriever who Martin would continue to bring food, hold, and love each night for companionship. Later, sneaking into the lab holding his father’s telepods, Martin noticed scientists bringing in his canine fellow and Martin became excited to see his test subject comrade. The golden retriever was lead to the first pod and placed inside to test again if organic matter would teleport to the second pod without mistake.

The sequence was initiated and swiftly completed. The second pod door opened and a scientist who inspected too close, was viscously attacked by the dog now broken down and reformed into a horrifically mutilated creature similar to Seth Brundle’s baboon turned inside out in the Fly but still very much alive. Martin, belligerent and traumatized is later promised by Bartok that the dog was euthanized humanely and it would never happen again.

Manipulated by Bartok and wanting to please his father figure, Martin agrees to spearhead the trial experiments and invites a young scientist named, Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga), that he met previously in their own meet cute reminiscent of Seth and Ronnie in part 1. Bartok also grants him freedom from his home at the lab and he is given a beautifully furnished 80’s apartment off site. Together over time, trial, and error, Martin and Beth unlock the missing key that Brundlefly took to its grave and Martin successfully teleports himself, completing his father’s work.

Stage 4…Adult Phase and truth in transformation

Martin walks in on scientists putting out a large bowl of liquified slop in a metallic dungeon below the lab’s flooring. Obscured within a cavern of surrounding steel and shadow, shockingly, his only friend he believed to be dead, painfully and laboriously crawls out to have its meal for the day and Martin looks on with wet eyes as he has been deceived by Bartok while his dog has survived on in suffering.

Later that night Martin sneaks into Brundledog’s layer and at first it readies itself to attack, but quickly, even after two years alone to abject inhumanity, recognizes Martin and softens. Wagging its deformed tail and whimpering, the creature lays its misshapen head in Martin’s lap to be pet and provided succor for his last moments of solace.

As man and his best friend reunite, Martin pulls out a cloth soaked in chloroform and covers it over Brundledog’s mouth while he holds it near. The maimed and damaged dog does not struggle and peers up at Martin with its one remaining blue eye. An azure, forgotten window to a veracious self underneath only memories of its past, dim but still lit pure in a way we recognize in all loving pets, but struggling to breathe out from beneath a surface of fury masked in ratty fur, and deformed bones and muscle, seemingly grateful for such tender mercy in a world that has only allowed misery and cruelty to rule it.

Martin cries again as his friend’s blue eye closes and the light is gone.

Martin soon learns that the medication he had been administered his entire life was placebos and Bartok had cameras placed in Martin’s apartment logging any progress of his eventual “change” leading Martin to ransack his home in protest. These new revelations coincide with the alteration that begins in Martin right after.

He and Beth escape, going on the run while Bartok sets up a manhunt. Martin let’s her know that he can cure himself using the telepods and another human but it would ultimately alter that person genetically leaving them grotesque and deformed in the process. After Martin learns more about he and his father’s biological past from a visit to Stathis (John Getz) from The Fly, Martin in cocoon form is captured and taken back to Bartok Industries to be experimented on.

Before any experimentation can begin, Martin stirs fully formed into the new flesh Cronenberg style as Brundlefly 2.0. Larger, stronger, and more monstrous than Seth Brundle, with sizable, carmine eyes, he brutally pursues the guards and scientists who mistreated him. Leaving death and highly effective gore effects in his wake Martin spits acid in a villain’s face and as he lays on the floor, face melting off, we the viewers witness him still breathing and convulsing. Gnarly and effective.

My favorite scene involves a fake out in which one of the security guard’s Rottweilers gallops up to Martin but instead of attacking, halts in front of Martin and wags its tail. A mandible claw leans down and slowly in towards the guard dog, but instead of harming it he pets the good boy on its head before moving on to kill its master. Awesome shit. Martin then sees Beth in one of the corridors, looks at her tenderly through newly insect eyes, and moves on searching for a showdown with Bartok.

A final battle between Martin and Bartok leads to Martin forcing Bartok into one of the telepods and Martin placing himself in the other. Beth ignites the sequence and both monster and man are teleported. Martin no longer Brundlefly 2.0, emerges from the pod in tact in his original human form ready to reunite with Beth but Bartok’s telepod door opens as well.

In the foggy smoke of scientific retribution a mangled, slug like creature that was once a corporate monster in human form, comes worming out, screeching in agony. The final shot shows a similar bowl of watery rations unfit for human consumption laid out in the same dungeon enclosure that held Brundledog in captivity. The newly formulated Bartokslug slithers into the light for his daily meal.

Once a titan of industry now reduced to one of his own subjects to be studied and controlled as a solitary fly lands on the edge of the bowl while Bartok feeds we fade to black and a villain’s comeuppance rarely goes down this smooth. A deeply dark ending to match The Fly while showing good can sometimes triumph over evil in this stygian world of corporate control and unchecked technology.

If The Fly portrayed the consequences of a man losing his agency through self harm, desperate to create a family unit to selfishly save what was left of himself, The Fly 2 explores the theme of learning from our parent’s mistakes, and that even if they were literal monsters we can still discover a way to carve out our own path and who they are or were does not define us and the things we can and cannot control. We don’t have to be what came before.

Even hidden within the profile of life’s maddening penumbra, all we have to do is come out into the light and shed not what we thought was the worst part of ourselves but actually be rid of the worst people and organizations that want those best parts for themselves to control and exploit.

But if we trust ourselves and those who truly care, a soft blue eye can still shine on even after.

So this weekend build yourself a fly free cocoon free fall of pillow and blankets on the couch, cook yourself up a room temperature bowl of water slop, hug up on your ol pup (or cat cool too), hunt down a copy of The Fly 2 and give chance to a much better than expected sequel to Cronenberg’s greatest film and maybe numero uno on the body horror Mount Rushmore. I had a Horrorble time revisiting it!

Next we’ll continue exploring our theme of Horrorble Romance trading flies and telepods for fleas and pentagramed pubs with An American Werewolf In London.

Thanks for reading!