After 33 (two months shy of 34) years I have finally seen the original The Fly. I have always wanted to see this film but I had never caught it on television and for the life of me I can't ever remember it playing. Then, back when I rented VHS cassettes from my local video store I had never picked it up off the shelf and taken it home, although I do remember seeing it on a select few shelves. And finally in about 1994 I stopped renting and buying movies that weren't widescreen editions of the films in question and thus never wanted to see a cropped and ugly looking transfer of The Fly. Thank god for DVD and widescreen TV's.
So last night I finished a film I have wanted to see for many a full moon. I expected to watch a B-movie about a guy turning into a fly. I expected a black and white cheap picture with hokey effects and some truly awful acting. After all, this film was made in 1958. A time when Hollywood (and others) were throwing on the screen a whole slew of cheap movies involving monsters, space aliens and other science fiction horrors. The B-movie horror experience in 1958 was something that teens were flocking to at an alarming rate.
So I was mighty surprised that The Fly was actually a much better film than expected. I can see why it has stood the test of time and become a classic from it's era and I can see how and why Cronenberg wanted to remake this film. It wasn't in black and white which I thought it was and it rose nicely above it's B-movie origins that it so easily could of been. The effects were good and the acting better (for the most part) than I had expected.
For those not in the know, The Fly is bout a scientist who, in his laboratory, discovers how to teleport matter from one place to the next. Being a brash and fearless scientist he teleports himself to test the machine but unfortunately when he does so a fly flies into the machine with him and when he remerges his and the flies bodies have melded together.
The horror in this version of The Fly is more subdued than the remake, and the scientist here is a family man working out of his basement. Unlike the remake, this film is told in flashback and rather than slowly becoming the fly our scientist is fly-like from the instant he blends with the creature. Like the remake though his mind slowly begins to dissipate as he starts to run out of time. The story is rather horrific but due to technical limitations and government regulations the horror and the gore are never seen and must be created in the viewers head versus on the screen. For the most part, the scientist/fly hybrid is covered by a sheet and you never see it. When it eats, it is again covered by the sheet, but the sounds and position of it's body we can only picture horrific things (even more so if you have seen the remake).
The effects, for 1958, are pretty damn good here. The fly/human hybrid is well put together with a nicely designed face and a scary looking arm. By todays standards it looks like a mask and prosthetics but for it's day it is rather convincing. The laboratory and all the gadgets are well designed and when the items teleport from one end of the lab to the other it looks and sounds convincing. The cinematography captures the wonder and excitement of these machines and the lighting and colours work well to create an aura of mystique to the proceedings.
The acting is pretty good too. David Hedison and Patricia Owens are great as the ill fated husband and wife and deliver excellent performances, especially Hedison who captures the raw emotion, terror and turmoil that his character goes through. Vincent Price, as his brother, is quite good too. His performance is low key and quiet but convincing, and while not aa good as Hedison, it is easy to see why he is a legend in the horror circuit. I haven't seen much of Price's work and I would love to see more but just based on this performance alone I had echoes and a few chills now seeing how good a job Geoffrey Rush did imitating him in House on Haunted Hill.
With that said, not all the performances were very good. Some were passible while others were pretty bad. A pretty bad performance, straight out of B-movie hell, comes from Torben Meyer as the night watchmen of Price's factory but the penultimate bad performance here is, as usual, owned by child actor Charles Herbert. Bad child performances are a dime a dozen in movies and while directors today have done a much better job with child actors, for the most part (or at least from the movies I've seen from that era) movies from the 40's, 50's and 60's generally have very wooden performances from the children.
And while the story is rather well put together, with great editing and a steady pace, and the film is rather original, the dialogue at times is pretty poor. Again, some of the bad dialogue is a product of the time this film was made but some of it, if it wasn't surrounded by men turning into flies and Vincent Price, would be wince inducing bad. Once again, most of this is due to child actor Herbert. Every time he opens his mouth it's like he's reading a cue card from just behind the camera written by the director on the fly (no pun intended) for exposition purposes.
With that aside though, The Fly is a rather exciting and well put together film. It's campy in a nostalgic way and it's somewhat scary in an old school kind of way. It delivers excitement and thrills and has a moral message about playing God and about what's wrong and what's right when it comes to science. We as an audience sympathize and feel for Hedison, Owens, and Price which as a marvellous feat for a horror movie made in the late fifties. This is due to the solid direction and great performances from our leads.
The Fly comes highly recommended by me and I feel like it is endlessly re-watchable. I'd have no problem sitting down and watching this film again with someone else, or even by myself. The remake is a great film that plays on the strengths of this one. It changes the ending and it takes away the idea of the flashback but it sticks pretty strongly to the overall story arc of this film. When I finally heard the classic line of 'Help me. Heelp Meee!', I wasn't expecting what I saw and after considerable reflection have decided that it was a rather gruesome and grim scene for it's time with another dose of excellent effects.
I can see why audiences were thrilled by this movie 54 years ago and I can see why there were 2 sequels that followed. I can see why Cronenberg, with his fixation on the body, chose to remake this film and I can see why people are still talking about this film over 50 years later. There are two questions I have now, after watching this film. 1) Exactly how different or how close is the remake to this film? and 2) How did they make a sequel and even a third film to this one? Well it's time to answer that second question so I bid you all a farewell and will return shortly with my views on Return of the Fly...
Film Rating: 79%
Breakdown (How The Fly scored 79%):
Production Design: 8 out of 10
Cinematography: 8 out of 10
Re-playability: 9 out of 10
Originality: 9 out of 10
Costumes: 8 out of 10
Directing: 8 out of 10
Editing: 8 out of 10
Acting: 7 out of 10
Music: 7 out of 10
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