The Fly

David Cronenberg
1986
Second Viewing

Arguably the film Cronenberg is best known for. Leave it to the creepy Canadian to take a campy Vincent Price vehicle and rework it into a genuinely skin-crawling experience. I'm a little biased in favor of this one to begin with seeing as how the great Jeff Goldblum plays the lead scientist role. And who better to play against one of the greatest actors of the 80's and 90's than Geena Davis? Shit, if Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis were cast in the lead roles for "Nights in Rodanthe" I'd have been first in line. There's an element of "The Fly" that I think is truly representative of Cronenberg's cinema in which JG leads GD to his typically unremarkable loft space after a disappointing party in order to show her the elaborately designed teleportation pods he's been working on. The incongruousness of these sci-fi aesthetics plopped square in the middle of what is presumably 1980's Toronto makes for a subtly bold move, a little absurd, but poker-faced in it's matter-of-factness. The slow transformation from man to insect is played brilliantly by Goldblum, and things just get better with the addition of prosthetics and puppetry. The acidic vomit shots are expectedly amazing, but most important is the heartstring tugging effect of a mangled Brundlefly holding a shotgun to his head with a shaky claw, as obsessive insanity and a half reptilian brain finally give way to repentant humanity.