THE FLY (1958)
It'll give you a buzz
(Brian waits for the crowd to stop groaning)
I'm a big fan of Cronenberg's 1986 The Fly, and wasn't sure what to expect from the original, especially since the Big Moments in this one have been endlessly parodied throughout my lifetime. As it is, it's a very good movie, and almost as good as Cronenberg's, although quite different.
The girl from Golden, Patricia Owens (who looks an awful lot like Jeanne Tripplehorn), stars here as a wife who freely admits she killed her husband (by squishing him in one of those big industrial squishing machines), but won't say why, until her brother-in-law coaxes it out of her. The rest, I'm sure, you're familiar with.
Scripted by James Clavell, this is a very faithful adaptation (remember those?) of the short story by George Langelaan - the only major departure that I can tell is that the setting's been moved from France to Montreal. For most of its running length - even after its flaws are shown in all their dubious glory - this is one effective movie about a poor bastard who's becoming less like himself every day and the woman who has to live with him. Well-acted and written, it's often tense, sometimes frightening and almost always emotionally resonant.
The problems are twofold. One, is the repetitive teleportation sequences. There must be, what, seven of them? Seven of them, each showing the same shots of working machinery and giving us the same ear-grating sound effects, each more tiresome than the last. The second problem is the revelation of what's happened to the good doctor. I don't really have a problem with the silly science behind this. Even in the smart remake, if Brundle and the fly were combined genetically, what became of the zillions of microorganisms on and in both of them? But a man with the head of a fly, seeing a hundred hexagonal Patricia Owenses, is kind of hard to take seriously when he looks that silly. Is there any way not to make him look silly? I doubt there is. The movie does overcome this aspect, but just barely.
Similarly problematic is the "Help me, help me!" and the little fly-with-a-human-head. (interesting note - even though Cronenberg's film has no" Help me! Help me!" scene, a little fly saying just that was shown in the newspaper ads)
Best line - a kid no older than nine says "She changed her mind. You know how women are." You learn quick, kid.
Surprisingly effective, while other films of its kind from its day (like The Blob) seem silly and dated. Vincent Price is great, as always. So why did it take me so long to realize the obvious homage to the source material when that unlucky bastard in The Fly II got his head squished under that elevator?