Exploring the Sequels/Horrorble Romance

# 15 The Fly

On being fly as hell and the laws of insectual attraction.

David Cronenberg’s The Fly has been written about countless times since it’s release in 1986. As one of the three greatest horror remakes along with Carpenter’s The Thing and Phillip Kauffman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, its life cycle as one of the great science fiction horror films of all time continues to grow.

A “science run amuck” body horror classic that metaphorically captures a cautionary tale on society’s fear of viral infections like the AID’s epidemic, the betrayal by the body as we age, our relationship to and dependence on technology, the seemingly unstoppable nature of addiction, and the relentless, slippery slope of self improvement. Substitute AID’s for Covid and all of these fears effect and alter our lives in the current world even more today than forty years ago.

The Fly is all of these ideas we choose to paper on to it, but is also more than the genre lenses used to categorize it. As much as we associate it as a disgusting, mad scientist allegory firmly planted in the horror section of our brains, The Fly is also one of cinema’s greatest romances. A love story between two souls more than just ships passing in the night. Full of cataclysmic drama as they crash into each other with feeling as devastatingly alluring and unmaintainable as the star crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Chunking Express, In The Mood For Love, Brokeback Mountain, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and other classic films on the complexities of our relationship to earth shattering endearments.

Cronenberg wastes no time immediately showing a meet cute between our scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), and Particle Magazine journalist Ronnie Quaife (Gena Davis), at a science gala backed by Seth’s employer, the Burtok corporation, before he takes her to his “only in the movies”, gigantic laboratory/warehouse/bachelor pad to proudly show her his life’s work of instantaneous teleportation. Goldblum and Davis dating in real life, brings an authentic attraction and we buy what they’re selling immediately.

Brundle, bookishly handsome, all quirky mannerisms, off beat cadences, and a charm that blurs the line of social naïveté and the confidence of knowing everything else. He already feels vaguely insect like, eyes bugging with excitement as he asks her on a date for cheeseburgers. Ronnie, his equal, naturalistically beautiful with savage intelligence, brimming with a confidence that crosses the line into suffering fools unkindly, likely destroying any man who tries to reciprocate the manipulation she had mastered in their world to get what she wants. A perfect match magnetized by the inescapable power of infatuation and the novelty of new skin with devout belief that such feelings could never evolve nor fade.

By the third act Seth has teleported successfully between two telepods he invented having taught his “only in the 80’s” style computer that will communicate wildly unknowable information just by typing questions into it like the scientists in The Thing. It’s awesome. But an undetected yet quantifiable ghost in the machine destined to haunt Brundle, Checkov’s house fly, is trapped in the telepod with him and both genetically coalesce when the computer teleports fly and man together, reforming as one in the second pod unnoticeable at first.

Like any relationship torn apart by addiction, the fly is Seth’s drug and impending habit edging in. A substance abused innocently and even accidentally at first, but then high as a fly on his own scientific supply, new perceived physical strengths and delusions of grandeur creep in as he begins to devolve from the enlightenment of man while regressing into a benighted world of brutality as a self appointed “insect politician” in a kingdom of pitiless, barbaric organisms.

Cronenberg’s cinematic new junkie, all teeth and fingernails falling out, skin breaking away to expose something foreign underneath, and the inability to eat without vomiting enzymes to breakdown sugary foods for consumption.

A stunning scene showcasing both Goldblum and Davis’ acting, Brundle, a broken, beast of burden over halfway through his horrific transformation, looks upward to the hovering moon through the skylight, hunched and struggling to speak through spastic twitches, pontificating to Ronnie on the philosophy of a fly who dreamt he was a man as she stares on in tearful trepidation. A Brundlefly is born. Beautifully touching and the best work of their careers.

Ronnie learns she’s pregnant with Brundlefly’s baby and after spying on and overhearing her plans to abort it, he abducts her at the doctor’s office and brings her back to what has become his lair. Driven by the madness of mutating biology he decides the only true way to keep his brood together is to teleport Brundlefly, Ronnie, and their unborn baby from the original two telepods into a third prototype compounding them all into a nuclear family as one molecular entity.

Ronnie’s boss Stathis (John Getz), seriously wounded by Brundlefly, shoots the telepod’s connective hoses allowing Ronnie to escape from her pod just in time. The computer again becomes confused and sets the command at the last second, to teleport Brundlefly and the other telepod itself together into the third prototype pod before Brundlefly can escape mixing the matter of life and tech.

As the glass door unlocks and opens from the interior of the third telepod, a new Brundlefly, all mangled exterior of organically mechanical gore, genetically merged and tangled in a web of cables, wires, and viscera, emerges reborn yet dying in the smoky mist, a Cronenbergian invention of the new flesh.

Telepodbrundlefly writhes slowly toward a hysterical Ronnie. Its head bowed staring down to the cold, empty floor, shaking in the grim, pain soaked pity of a fairy tale approaching its end. It meagerly raises the gun Ronnie holds to what remains of its skull and maybe the last shred of Seth. The merger of prince and monster, begging the damsel to slay all that’s left of them both.

Special effects artist Chris Wilas’, expressive puppet constructed of silicon and rubber is still impressive in its ability to bring my body to chills and teary eyes every viewing. Like witnessing a beloved pet you adore that acquired rabies, but instead of attacking you in its insufferable madness, it begs for mercy and release by its cherished marrow. The creature’s inordinate, inhuman eyes express a still knowing connection to the humanity and humility of when one has tread too far. A modern Icarus and insect flying too close to the sun.

Ronnie bellows her own wails of agony and mortally silences its remaining echos of misery. Keening her lost love to the swell of Howard Shore’s devastating orchestral score as screen fades to black.

In the science of romance there is chaos in the chemistry and flies in the ointment of rationality. No matter how far we’ve strayed from the uniqueness that made us wholly desirable and who and what we thought we were, it’s sometimes irreversibly tragic but always deeply human. A final act of love such as this may blow us away but we can take comfort closing our eyes and letting go, as even at our worst we are still worthy of our most potent emotion and hopefully, forgiveness.

With the last struggled twine of tarsi claws wrapped around the mercy and memory of its lover’s shotgun, a brilliant man may have broken the rules to become more than just he and a fly. But maybe, in nature’s own brutal fashion, a lowly insect that never asked to flout, also understood itself. Forgotten in its final moment, perhaps it too found feeling, and reason to cry out for help.

A film attached to wings of surprising warmth from a master director most known for his chilly detachment, if you have yet to see The Fly grab a swatter and to better understand the flesh smack yourself, liquify a truck load of junk food cause solid food be suckin, light a citronella candle for ambiance, and insext your old lady or man to come over and watch The Lord of the Fly himself, David Cronenberg’s horrorble classic. I’ll be climbing the walls in anticipation until you do.

Thanks for reading and up next we’re gonna discuss Brundlefly’s baby boy buggin out in The Fly 2!