A common housefly isn’t usually the stuff of nightmares. But Jim Healy, director of Cinematheque film programming, knows better. Rather than featuring your standard bloodthirsty vampires and possessed dolls, he’s opted for David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) to unsettle and horrify audience members over Halloween weekend. (If you prefer to see chainsaw-wielding killers and man-eating plants, those will be on Cinematheque's screen this Spooktober, too.)
A classic example of science gone wrong, and, according to Healy, the best 1980s horror flick, The Fly stars Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. The movie portrays the painful disintegration of Goldblum’s body and love life after he accidentally splices his own DNA with that of a fly. Let Healy break down the movie for you and explain what makes the story truly terrifying.
1. Deeper subtext
“The first movie, like a lot of ’50s horror and sci-fi movies, is about science run amok and the scary things that scientists can come up with in their labs in the name of experimentation and forward-thinking. And it’s kind of as simple as that. There’s not much subtext beyond that.”
In the 1980s version, Goldblum plays the inventor of a teleportation device which breaks a person’s body down to the genetic level and transports it to a new location. Just as Goldblum’s character begins a romance with a reporter, played by Geena Davis, his experiment goes awry. A fly gets into the device, leaving the inventor with half human, half fly DNA.
“He starts to disintegrate because his body starts to fall apart as he becomes more fly than human. When the movie came out, it was during the AIDS epidemic, when a lot of people were dying, and their bodies were breaking down because of this disease. I think the movie probably had some kind of resonance on that level — that there was this epidemic that had its own element of body horror to it.”
2. A tragic human element
“You really care about the characters, and you see Geena Davis watching him fall apart. She doesn’t give up on him, even though he shuts her out after a while. And the movie has all kinds of other dimensions to their love story. Ultimately, I think that’s what you feel in the movie. There’s this revulsion and horror with his body falling apart. But at the same time, it’s really just horrifying to see this promising romance break apart because of this accident of science.”
3. Familiar but warped themes
“Like all horror movies, there’s this level of perversity to it. That’s what horror is — things that we take for granted every day. In the case of this film, our limbs, our body parts, our basic body functions all just start to break down in front of our eyes. … I think the audiences have to recognize something from the world or from their lives that’s being twisted, and warped, and made horrific.
"We’re also showing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 [this month]. It has the horror of being trapped in a remote place, among strange people. But, on a whole other level, the movie is a satire of the meat industry. And [it] takes the Texas barbecue — something that meat eaters revel in — to this horrific level of cannibalism. For it to be an effective film, it has to be something from your life or the world that is being made horrific before your eyes.”
4. Thoughtful special effects
"It’s 1986, so we’re talking almost a half a decade before digital effects are going to be recognized. Mainly, the special effects are all about Goldblum's deterioration, and they’re magnificent, done by a guy named Chris Walas, who was one of the top guys in the ’80s. What he did on The Fly is his career achievement. Goldblum becomes unrecognizable in several different stages — always unrecognizable, but always different looking from the previous stage. And it’s really gross but also deeply effective and disturbing.
"The effects and the whole vision of The Fly will be all that more of an organic 1986 experience when we show it because we’re actually showing an original 35-millimeter print. That’s one of the things we do at the Cinematheque, when we can. It’s a collector's print. You’ll get to see the film as it was originally shown, as it was originally intended.”
5. Jeff Goldblum
“This is the movie where he really solidifies his star presence. He’d been acting in movies for over 10 years at that point, including some very high-profile movies. Speaking of great horror movies: the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Goldblum is in, as far as I’m concerned, the two greatest remakes of all time: the second version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the second version of The Fly.
"His whole range as a performer can be seen in this one role, where he starts off as this nerdy scientist, becomes this kind of dominating, cruel sexual hedonist, and then becomes this pathetic figure who is literally falling apart before our eyes. And, man, it's just a great performance. When they talk about how horror movies are often ignored by the Oscars, this is probably the greatest performance in a horror movie that was ignored.”
