Customer Reviews

Fly [VHS]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I hate it when reviewers state that these types of films "still hold up quite well" or worse still "are quite dated". Dated compared to what? They weren't being made with 2002 audiences in mind and any film is "dated" after the year it is released. These types of Sci Fi efforts dont need to be viewed according to how films are made now. Simply appreciate them for the imagination they show in their special effects and story telling.

There is certainly alot to appreciate and enjoy in 1958's classic "The Fly". It is a film which I think is amazing in the story it tells which is both horrifying and very sad and at times very touching. The production as a whole is lush with beautiful Fox colour and a cast of fine, restrained performers who deliver thoughtful performances and who have an obvious respect for the material they are working with.

Heading the cast is one of my favourite actors Vincent Price playing Francois Delambre in a restrained performance which I feel is one of his finest. David (Al) Hedison who later found fame on the "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" TV Series in the early sixities plays his brother Andre, a brilliant scientist and delves into the area of matter transfer with horrifying results. He makes the fatal mistake of using himself as a Guinea Pig in his experiments with the result that his own matter becomes entangled with that of a fly unwittingly involved in the transfer experiment. The result is one of the very best special effects efforts to come out of the 1950's in that Andre acquires the head and arm of the fly and his head and arm is transferred to that of the fly. It is a horrific look which still scares me to this day so effective is it in its depiction. The unveiling scene where Andre's wife Helene (played very effectively by Patricia Owens) pulls the black sheet off Andre's head is still one of the classic scenes in Science Fiction drama as her horrified reaction is multipled on screen as she screams in discovering the terrible truth of what has happened to her husband.

Andre's descent into desperation and madness as the fly's characteristics take him over are tragically done. His efforts to eat a meal from under his black sheet, his out of control "Fly" arm taking on a life of its own, and his frantic efforts to try to communicate with others using a type writer are graphically portrayed and are very disturbing. Never though is he really viewed as some sort of deranged monster out to harm anyone, rather an unfortunate individual who was careless in his experiments for one split second. When he scrawls on the blackboard that he still loves Helene while trying to control the horrible fly claw, for one moment an essentially horrific story takes on that of a great love story and our sympathy is totally with Andre in his dilemma.

Patricia Owens also deserves special mention for her performance in "The Fly" as well. Hers could have been a thankless love interest role however she infuses her character with real strength and the scenes of her and her son Philippe trying desperately to catch the fly with the human head in the house and garden are real edge of the seat suspense.

"The Fly" is intelligently written, very smoothly produced and has a good balance between story/character development and the essential horror tale. It is without a doubt one of the very best of the Sci Fi efforts to come out of the 1950's along with the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "Them" and "It Came From Outer Space". Enjoy it as intelligent drama that doesn't strick for sensation in every frame. I get new things to appreciate from it with every screening.

The best laid plans of mice and men, not to mention flies.

This is first rate science fiction, but of a heart-wrenching variety.

This story is a bit in the spirit of Jack London tales, where some spirited individual gets crushed (in this case, literally), by going out too far on his own.

In this case the spirited individual is a family man who happens to be a scientific genius, developing in his basement the first matter teleportation device. It works, but he fails to realize that the wilderness he confronts in it is not as user friendly as his wife and kid. It confuses him with a fly (which was in the disintegrator with him but escaping his notice). In other words he escapes nature's notice, which didn't bother to distinguish him from the fly, treating him with even more indifference than he treated the fly...

Interestingly, the 1986 remake was not a remake at all, but a spinoff. This spinoff being the opposite story, really: There, only the interpersonal relations fail to be user friendly; nature is fine. (In both films there is a love triangle, but in the first the hero is on the inside track and fine; in the second, the hero is on the outside-and it does him in.)

Acting is very good and script is flawless. Effects do what they need to do and makeup is effective.

One of the best acting scenes is when the wife wakes up in bed alone, clothed, and we watch her as she gradually realizes that what she slowly remembers was not a nightmare, but real-a very intense scene and executed without a word.

Another good scene is where the wife finally sees him eye to eye for the first time after the accident, expecting him to be ok by hoping against hope. She is disappointed, to put it mildly. And the audience can't help but feel for and with her. And with him.

The drama in the lab, with the lab-coat and ever-present equations on the blackboard silently in the background, is classic and captivating; in the most dramatic moment the blackboard gets carelessly rubbed out and the husband scribbles, "I love you."

Though tragic, the film has its own charm and fascination. His son in the end decides that he also wants to be a scientist, and many a kid watching the film may well come to the same conclusion.

This film is a good example of the classic science fiction theme of the 1950s. Man through his science takes experimentation of his environment one step too far. Nature is harmony. Man's attempts to disrupt that harmony leads to destruction and horror to himself and his loved ones. This is a well intentioned, poignantly directed and produced film. The horror resulting from Al (David) Hedison's experiments gone awry are devastating and disturbingly represented in the film's images. Once seen, the viewer can never forget them. This is a powerful film even to this day. This VHS copy in pan & scan is very good. The colors are rich and the Stereo Sound is excellent. Highly recommended!

Although the 1986 remake is certainly a very good one--, better than alot of remakes--The original is still a fascinating and disturbing film. In this film the scientist and the fly exchange head and arm. His wife goes through hell trying to capture the fly with the human head and after coming to the conclusion that it's hopless crushes him in a huge press. In the 1986 version the scientist is slowly transforming into a fly, with his girlgriend trying her best to cure his malady. The final scene in the 1958 film is as shocking and unsettling as ever, and it not aknowledged in the remake. What's more in regards to the last review, the 1958 film is NOT the least comical, it is down right distressing. I suggest that you watch it again. The 1986 remake is not particularly scary, but it is gross at time, but relatively restrained for a Cronenberg film (thank God for that). For a film by David Cronenberg the 1986 fly is quite an effective achievement. Most of his films are little more than disgusting gore and slime with little plot. The fly is a good story and remake with good use of slimy make up.enjoy both the 1958 and 1986 fly.

The film opens on the scene of a man who has been crushed in a machine and his wife said she is the one who pushed the lever, but something does not fit and her brother in law (Vincent Price) doesn't think she did it. This launches us into into a re-telling of how the women's scientist husband was obsessed with a matter dis-integrater he was working on. Something goes wrong with his work and he winds up with a fly head and hand. Now his wife is quickly trying to find the fly with her husbands head so that they can put him back together. This is better than the majority of science fiction during the 50's because the story tries to focus on the invention instead of falling into the old mad scientist routine. The film also shows the scientist as a tragic victim instead of as rampaging monster (which is what happened in way too many 50's films). The special effects are good enough and the acting is solid.

I must say that The Fly is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. I saw the 1986 remake when I was twelve, and it scared me. I swore I would never watch it, but soon it had me in its spell. I became interested in seeing the original 1958 one when The Fly 2 came out on video. Vincent Price does an excellent job as the brother of the scientist, and the ending -- where the scientist gets caught in a spider's web -- is both sad and genius. Both versions of The Fly are good, but nothing compares to the original.

Amongst the countless movies that focused around the unthinkable consequences of certain experiments that shone in more than one scientific mind that spanned from the middle thirties until the arrival to the moon (the epic peak of the scientific paradigm), this brief story had to its favor a significant element, to blend the science with the myth (Beauty and the beast or The phantom of the opera) in which the triviality plays an important role. This accidental experiment works out as an acidic metaphor and a terrible warning specially when you state all the factors are under control.

A clever scientist bets for a curious transportation device based on the integration and disintegration of the molecular structures. At the beginning everything seems going over wheels, but suddenly something absolutely unexpected happens and the genetic factor makes its appearance.

This movie is part of the very reduced catalogue of invaluable treasured films you have to get at the moment to achieve the most emblematic sci-fi movies ever made.

I saw this movie when I was about 7. I started watching it about half way through. I thought all the special effects were aswome. I didn't think the wife was going to make it out of the hydrolic press when she reaches in. The most startling part for me was the end. I hear this little "Help me......help me....." and you see him in the spider's web. What creeped me out the most was when it shows the spider's head with Audre's reflection it the spider's eyes. Then there was that CRUNCH. That sounded so much like someone biting an apple, I haven't had an apple since then without thinking of the spider's head. But I still think this is one of the best old Sci-Fi stories, even though I haven't watched this movie since that last scene.

One of the best horror films of any age is the 1958 version of THE FLY. What director Kurt Neumann has created is a film that includes the shock moments required of any horror movie, but to these moments he adds a disturbing montage of sight and sound that grab at the reader to yank him into the minds of the actors so that the viewer can see and hear the horror up close. Only the best science fiction movies can do this.
The movie begins in a flashback when Francois Delambre (Vincent Price) discovers that his sister-in-law Helen (Patricia Owen) has been accused of murdering her husband Andre (David Hedison) by squashing his head in a compressor. Her story forms the basis of the film. She insists that she is neither insane nor a cold-blooded murderer. Helen tells Francois that her scientist-husband Andre had been experimenting with a matter transportation device as in STAR TREK, but in this case, he had inadvertently allowed a housefly to enter the transportation chamber with himself. The result of the experiment was a man with the head and arm of a fly and a fly with the head and arm of a man. Scriptwriter James Clavell of SHOGUN fame had apparently never heard of a pattern buffer that could allow for simultaneous transport of dissimilar DNA hosts. What makes THE FLY click is Andre's reaction to his new form and Helen's acceptance of that reaction. At first, Andre is grief stricken, and tries to hide his condition from her. He places a scarf over his head and keeps his fly-claw in his pocket. There is no need for any fancy special effects here. The simple use of a scarf is all that is required to generate suspense. Later, when it is time to eat, Helen brings soup which he loudly slurps. This soup scene is one of a series of images that are all the more horrible for their morphed simplicity. The viewer can nearly literally taste what life is like for a man/fly hybrid. Andre communicates to Helen by using his human arm to scrawl messages, leaving her puzzled and anguished over her inability to help. She determines to see the face under the scarf and rips it off. This scene is one of the two indelible unions of sight and sound that cause viewers to remember THE FLY as some surreal mixture of a paradoxical link of disgust with an unwillingness to turn away their heads. As she sees Andre's head, the camera shifts perspective to Andre, who sees her as only a fly can: as a infinity of kaleidoscopic images of a screaming woman with each of an infinity of mouths howling an infinity of pain. Once she can gather herself together, she tries to help by recapturing the fly with Andre's head. Since a fly's lifespan is quite limited, the only hope she has to regain her husband is to find that fly, an unlikely prospect at best. In despair, he asks her to kill him with that compressor. She does so, and the movie reverts to the present with Francois discussing the case with Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall). Each is sure that Helen has gone quietly mad, thus legally preventing her from trial. As Francois and Charas exit the house, the movie's second unforgettable grafting of sight to sound occurs when they see that a strange-looking fly has become entangled in a spider's web, and the spider, looking as large and ferocious as the monster in TARANTULA, looms ever closer. The camera zooms on the fly which has Andre's head attached. The viewer can see his eyes bug out as the spider approaches. He shouts a squeaky HELP ME over and over, but Francois is too slow to react. The spider kills the fly just before Francois kills the spider with a large rock.
The horror of THE FLY does not diminish with repeated viewings nor can the later remakes and sequels detract from its suggestion that the most ordinary things in nature can change into something so terrible as to cause the audience to squirm in its seat and think that the weirdness on the screen is not so far fetched at all.

The Fly starring Vincent Price, is one hour and thirty-four minutes long and was released on August 29, 1958. The story takes place in Montreal, Quebec; which explains why the reason for the French accents. The film starts at the end when Helene Delembre has just taken part in killing her husband. Helene calls Francois Delambre (her brother-in-law) and Francois calls Police Inspector Charas. We find out in the film that Helene's husband, Andre Delambre, has made a machine that can transport atom through the air and to another place. When Andre runs a second tests on himself again, a fly gets caught in the machine with him and Andre has the left arm and head of a fly. After a few days of this new body, he finds himself losing his sanity and orders Helene to kill him. At the end of the movie when they begin to take Helene away, Philippe Delambre (her son) tell Uncle Francois that he has found the funny looking fly. Francois tells Inspector Charas about it. Philippe shows them both where the fly is and in the end Inspector Charas kills it with a rock. In the movie the monster fly is only shown for about ten minutes; though the left hand is shown earlier. So the horror does not come till the end of the story. Unlike most monster movies, The Fly seems to have a heart. The Fly does not go on any killing spree nor does The Fly kidnaps anyone. So at the end of the movie, one has to feel sad for The Fly. I give this movie an AAA+++.