The Fly Reviews

A 1950s cult favorite, THE FLY blends sci-fi and horror in its story of an obsessed scientist (David Hedison) who likes to fiddle around with his matter-transmitting device. After zapping guinea pigs from dimension to dimension, he decides to put the transmitter to the ultimate test and enters the machine himself. He fatefully pulls the switch, failing to notice that a pesty housefly is also in the machine. That little nuisance proves to be a gross inconvenience as the scientist, now fly-headed, emerges from his experiment, while buzzing somewhere around the house is the interfering fly, now sporting a human mug. The success of THE FLY is hard to fathom. Not even the numerous plot loopholes--for example, how, if the scientist has the head of the housefly, can he still think like a human?--can lessen the film's popularity. Most memorable is the film's chilling ending, in which the housefly with the human head is glimpsed in a spiderweb trap, struggling and begging, "Help me," in its wavering, high-pitched voice. The film is both fun and frightening, and can also be viewed (however modest its intentions) as a commercialized techno-version of Franz Kafka's allegory Metamorphosis. Its success led to two less inspired sequels, THE RETURN OF THE FLY and CURSE OF THE FLY, and the superior 1986 David Cronenberg remake.