This unsettling howler from 1958 features one of the first transgenic monstrosities, the man-fly gone awry. A cautionary tale of scientific hubris, Kurt Neumann’s widescreen wonder has electronics whiz Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) building a gizmo that disintegrates matter and reassembles it in a phone booth down the hall, atom by atom. To counter his wife’s qualms about his teleportation toy, Andre declares, “God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature!” What Andre overlooks is that nature is buzzing around his head at that very moment. When he next tries out his matter mover, Andre transmits not only himself but an unsuspecting bluebottle, and the two genomes join. With great insectoid prosthetics, fly’s-eye optical effects, and Vincent Price at high pitch, The Fly created a buzz that lasted through several sequels: Return of and Curse of, and, years later, David Cronenberg’s gruesome but genetically more genuine version. The original Andre Delambre was no Atom Ant, but he was pretty fly for a white guy. —Steve Seid
I saw this a long time ago, but I think I'm one of the few who actually prefers this to the Cronenberg remake. Anybody else? No? Eh, maybe I should watch them both again.
I saw the "fly" at 4 years old, and it terrified me; the image of the man with the fly head I could see in the shadows at night produced by my night-light. The ending I find extremely sad. I feel the same unbearable sadness as with The Elephant man. The Fly is silly alright, the dialogues are rather unnatural, but it's sad as hell. 4/5
I gave it three stars (and imaginary change). I'd give it a four if I knew its apparently sincere belief in itself were ironic rather than purely naive. It helps to know Vincent Price had laughing fits the whole day of the "help me! help me!" spiderweb scene shoot.
