If you or a loved one is experiencing physical or romantic attraction to Jeff Goldblum and you want these feelings to stop, watch The Fly.
I can’t believe this movie exists! Someone just thought, “What if a human turned into a fly?” and this nightmare was born. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is great, but so terrifying.
Basically, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) invites a reporter, Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), over to his apartment to show her his amazing invention. It’s a teleporter! Thank god, no more LA traffic.
But after weeks of failed experiments where the teleporter cannot properly transport organic matter, Brundle decides to drunkenly use the machine on himself. There is, however, one small problem.
The teleporter fuses the DNA of Seth Brundle and a stowaway fly. Thus begins a very slow and horrifying transformation, which includes a sequence where Brundle actually believes himself to be physically superior because of his newfound strength and energy.
Obviously things get much much worse after that.
Veronica straddles the line between a complete rejection of the hideous monster and a lingering love that she developed for the old Brundle.
But Brundle starts to lose his mind over the course of his transformation.
Which makes it difficult for him to engineer a solution to his problem. As he becomes more physically a fly, he becomes more mentally a fly. Veronica wants to help and also wants to run for her life.
The final scene is incredibly graphic and disturbing, and apparently wasn’t even the most gruesome scene in the original cuts. According to Wikipedia, there was a famous sequence where Brundle teleports a cat and a baboon together and then an unbelievably deformed creature emerges from the Telepod. It attacks Brundle and he must kill it with a metal pipe. But early screeners found that this caused audiences to lose sympathy with Brundle, making the rest of the film fall flat, so it was cut. Also one audience member was confirmed as having thrown up during the scene.
But the film as it is works well to keep you feeling sorry for Brundle all the way to the bitter end. Not to mention the amazing, Oscar-winning special effects by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis elevate the film from disturbing and silly to truly nightmarish. Something about 80s practical effects is just so great. Nothing CGI ever looks as good.
The film has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (compared to a 95% for the 1958 original version). But this version is definitely a classic in its own right.
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