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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
On the nuisance and disgust scale, the common housefly probably ranks quite a bit lower than the cockroach, the rat, and perhaps even the ant. But, as Housefly: An Everyday Monster proves, it's no less deserving of its own documentary. Clocking in at an eminently digestible 45 minutes, this Austrian-made, British-narrated film is an excellent primer on flies, their origins, their habits, and their predators. Using crisp macrophotography of the sort employed to spectacular effect on the 1996 film Microcosmos, director Kurt Mündl brings us up close and personal with what indeed looks like a monster. Like all good nature documentaries, Housefly entertains while it educates, balancing every dose of delightful creepiness (squirming maggots in cow dung!) with informative tidbits about a creature with which we've coexisted for thousands of years. For instance, did you know that many flies tend to get a fungus in autumn that slowly kills them? Apparently, in one of nature's more comforting examples of poetic justice, even parasites get parasites. --Steve Landau
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So much about the housefly,
By John Ranold "chiuchimu" (NorthHollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Housefly: An Everyday Monster (DVD)
All the info you'll ever need about houseflies and more. Amazing close-ups showing the strange mouth parts of flies and footages of maggots eating a dead animal make this DVD fascinating but somewhat hard to stomach.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous Footage; Common Language,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Housefly: An Everyday Monster (DVD)
"Housefly: An Everyday Monster" 45 minute video by Kurt Mundl, 1994.
Nominated for the 1994 Wildscreen Award, this documentary can serve two audiences. By avoiding technical language, it can easily hold the public viewer for 45 minutes. For the teacher (from high school to graduate entomology) there is need for additional technical terminology, but the photography could not be better. The excellent micro-photography begins with the first frames following a fly in flight and pupating. A variety of flies is briefly scanned, revealing a variety of spines, venations, etc. without technical terms. The narration is clear and in the King's English. Throughout, the housefly's close association with humans is stressed including a re-creation of Neolithic hunter's kill and later our storage of food. The African origin of the housefly is illustrated, and the viewer will realize how much flies have been an unnoticed part of those scenes. The close-ups of the sponging mouthparts are spectacular, especially if the viewer is not approaching mealtime. The following fly predators are shown eating flies: lizards, spiders, frogs, fish, preying mantids, and wasps. The close up of the fly eye identifies "facets." Halteres are called "balancers," wing veins are correctly identified as living tissues, and the sponging mouthparts, described as pharyngeal pumps, are shown in action without technical terminology. Close-up views of the tarsi show how the fly tastes with its feet. Flies take nourishment from the liquids in the birth of a calf and the placenta, and take shelter in stables. Fly mating is shown followed by accurate views of ovipositing in "cow pads" and "dung." The adult fly emerges from the pupal case using an eversible pouch. The 1788 introduction of the fly into Australia is reenacted. Fly amanita mushrooms are cooked with milk to form a muscarine fly poison. Swallows feed flies to their young and fabulous aerial footage shows a swallow catching a fly in mid-air. Flypaper, household toilets and the transfer of pathogens from "WC" to toast via regurgitated liquid food droplets concludes the footage before the fall die-off. A shrew gobbles cold flies and a fungus infects survivors. But a few overwinter in the stables and sheds. Most such documentaries are loaded with anthropomorphic and erroneous statements but this video has few errors: spiders do not spin a "cocoon," females do not become fertile 30 hours after they are "born" but after they emerge from the pupal case, and chitin is not pronounced with a soft "ch." But these are minor, nearly irrelevant to the public viewer and for the teacher and entomologist, easily corrected. John Richard Schrock
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
KKK9F6,
By
This review is from: Housefly: An Everyday Monster (DVD)
LOVE this movie!
I remember watching this when I was a kid 20 years ago and it hasnt loast a bit of its magic! I wish I knew more about its place in history, techniques used to make it etc., My ninth graders thoroughly enjoyed it. School should be this fun all the time!
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