The Fly (1986 film)
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The Fly is a 1986 science fiction film produced by Brooksfilms and 20th Century Fox, directed by David Cronenberg, and starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz. It is a high budget remake of 1958 film of the same name, but with a substantially different plot. The film is more of a reconceptualization than a remake, one which takes the basic germ of the 1957 short story and the 1958 film and then goes in a different direction. The soundtrack was composed by Howard Shore. This movie was shot in Toronto, Ontario.
The Fly was a box office success upon its release and was critically acclaimed in the press.
Plot
As with many of Cronenberg's films, The Fly deals with themes of bodily disfigurement or metamorphosis and the darker aspects of human emotions and behavior. The film also deals with the dangers of the misuse of science to terrible consequences. An underlying aspect of the story is the doomed love affair between Goldblum and Davis and the rivalry between Goldblum and Getz that results from this.Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a brilliant but eccentric scientist. He meets Veronica Quaife (Davis), a journalist for Particle Magazine, at a party held by Bartok Science Industries, which provides funds for Brundle's work. Brundle takes Veronica back to his warehouse laboratory (where he also lives) and shows her his invention: a set of "telepods" that allow instantaneous teleportation of an object from one pod to another. Veronica is highly impressed and eventually agrees to document Seth's work. Although the telepods can transport inanimate objects perfectly, they do not work correctly on living things. Seth unintentionally demonstrates this horrific fact when he attempts to teleport a baboon, which is killed when it is reintegrated inside-out. Seth and Veronica soon begin a romantic relationship, and their first sexual encounter inspires Seth. He realizes the machine is not perfectly recreating living objects but is rather "interpreting" them, and sets about reprogramming the telepod computer to cope with the flesh.
Seth then succeeds in teleporting a baboon with no apparent harm. Flush with this success, Brundle's judgment soon becomes impaired by alcohol and his paranoid fear that Veronica is secretly rekindling her relationship with her editor and former lover Stathis Borans (Getz) when she suddenly departs before they can celebrate. In reality, Veronica has gone to confront Borans about his continuing interference in her life. Unaware of this, a drunk and jealous Brundle decides to teleport himself. Just before the telepod door automatically closes, a common housefly gets into the pod with him without his knowledge. Brundle emerges from the receiving telepod, seemingly normal.
In the immediate aftermath of his teleportation, Seth reconciles with Veronica, and begins to exhibit a sense of intoxicating euphoria, as well as heightened strength, endurance, and sexual potency. However, he soon becomes violent and arrogant, and when Veronica refuses to be teleported, Brundle abandons her, claiming that she can't "keep up" with him. Brundle then meets a voluptuously sleazy woman named Tawny at a bar (and takes her home for the night), but the next morning, Veronica arrives in time to prevent Brundle from forcibly teleporting her. Eventually, Brundle learns that the telepod computer, confused by the presence of two separate life-forms in the sending pod, merged him with the fly at the genetic level, and realizes that he is slowly becoming a hybrid creature that is neither insect nor human (which the doomed Seth begins referring to as "Brundlefly"). As time goes on, Seth reconciles with Veronica, but begins to deteriorate as he becomes progressively less and less human in appearance. Soon, Seth begins leaving sloughed-off human body parts in his medicine cabinet, dubbing it "The Brundle Museum of Natural History". He also quickly begins to exhibit fly-like characteristics, as when he becomes incapable of eating solids and must vomit digestive enzymes (which he refers to as "vomit-drop") in order to dissolve food. Eventually, he realizes that his mind is also becoming more insect-like; brutal, compassionless, and driven by primitive appetites he can't control. To her horror, Veronica learns that she is pregnant, and she can't be sure if the child was conceived before or after Brundle's fateful teleportation.
When Seth learns that Veronica is planning on having an abortion to rid herself of the possibly mutated baby she's carrying, he abducts her and takes her back to his warehouse. Stathis Borans comes to her rescue, but is injured and nearly killed by the almost fully-transformed Brundle, who dissolves Stathis' hand and foot with his corrosive vomit-drop. Stathis is spared from death only by the pleading of Veronica, who begs Brundle not to kill him. Brundle then undergoes his final transformation when his grotesque, insect-human hybrid body sheds its outer layer of decaying flesh. The now-mute Brundlefly then traps Veronica inside a telepod, in a desperate attempt to restore its own humanity by fusing with both Veronica and her unborn child. However, as the telepods are warming up, the wounded Stathis Borans manages to shoot the power cables connecting to Veronica's telepod with his shotgun, allowing her to escape unharmed. Seeing this, Brundlefly attempts to step out of its own telepod just as the teleportation occurs, and is gruesomely fused with chunks of metal and other components. As the mortally wounded Brundlefly-telepod fusion crawls out of the receiving pod, it silently asks Veronica to end its suffering with Borans' shotgun. A devastated Veronica hesitates for a moment, and then pulls the trigger, mercifully ending the life of her hideously transformed lover.
The controversial sequel is The Fly II (1989). There has been some discussion as to whether the sequel "really" counts as a part of Cronenberg's Fly universe. Cronenberg feels that the stories in his films have defintive beginning and endings, and he has never considered making a sequel to one of his own films, although others have made sequels to Cronenberg films, including Scanners (1981).
Critical Response
Upon its release, The Fly was praised for being more emotionally involving and genuinely poignant in comparison to Cronenberg's previous films, as well as having a certain simplicity and stylishness which set it apart from other, more gratuitous movies. Jeff Goldblum's tour-de-force performance was applauded as well, and many believe it to be his finest performance to this day. Goldblum was thought by many to be a shoe-in for an Academy Award nomination, and when he wasn't nominated, many prominent film critics stated that he'd been cheated.
The film was also widely taken to be about AIDS, although Cronenberg denies this and states that the subtext/metaphor of the film is the natural process of aging and death. He states that "we've all got the disease, the disease of being finite." This, when coupled with the tragic love-story of the plot (harking back to films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) makes The Fly an all-too human film, albeit filled with Cronenberg's familiar obsessions and gruesome attention to detail. The spectacular "Brundlefly" make-up was given a 1986 Academy Award.
A Disease With a Purpose
The Academy Award-winning makeup seen in The Fly was carefully planned out by the effects wizards at Chris Walas, Inc. over a period of several months. The final "Brundlefly" creature was designed first, and then the various steps needed to carry protagonist Seth Brundle to that final incarnation were designed afterwards. The transformation was intended to be a metaphor for the aging process. Indeed, Brundle loses hair, teeth, and fingernails, and his skin becomes discolored and lumpy. The intention of the filmmakers was to give Brundle a bruised, cancerous, and diseased look that gets progressively worse as time goes on.
Various looks were tested for the different stages before the perfected versions seen in the completed film were arrived at. Some early test footage can be seen on the 2005 The Fly: Collector's Edition DVD.
Early versions of the different makeup stages include:
- A prototype of Stage 2, featuring more exaggerated facial discoloration, open sores, and peeling skin (test footage of this version can be seen on the Fly CE DVD).
- The first test version of Stage 4-A, which featured the same face sculpt as the final version of the makeup, but also had an enlarged headpiece underneath Goldblum's wig. The "hernia-bulge" on his side is in a lower position on his torso than the final version, and only Brundle's face and hands are visibly mutated (also, the sticky pads on his palms are a different color than the metallic-green pads seen in the final film). The rest of Goldblum's body is discolored with body makeup, and there are numerous insect hairs on his arms and torso. In the final version of the makeup seen in the film, Brundle's entire body is lumpy and deformed (test footage of this version can be seen on the Fly CE DVD).
- There may also be another version of Stage 4-A (which can be seen in nearly all of the publicity and still photos of that stage). This version appears to have slightly different arm appliances (with less distorted hands and the lighter-colored palm-pads of the first prototype), and more hair on Brundle's head (which actually seems to coordinate better with Stage 4-B, since Stage 4-B appears to have more hair than the filmed version of Stage 4-A). It is unclear if this really is a prototype, since most photographs of this version indicate that it was filmed on the set.
[Prototype (?) version of Stage 4-A]
[Screencap of the film version of Stage 4-A]
[Stage 4-B, from the deleted "monkey-cat" scene]
The following is a breakdown of each stage of Seth Brundle's horrifying transformation as designed and created by the CWI crew (with behind-the-scenes information presented in itallics):
- [STAGE 1] (on view in the scene where Veronica discovers the small insect hairs on Brundle's back): Brundle's face is discolored, and it looks as though he has a bad allergic rash. Small insect hairs are growing out the scratches in his back (an injury sustained prior to Brundle's fateful teleportation when he accidentally rolled onto a stray circuit board). Actor Jeff Goldblum's face was painted with dabs of blue, red, green, yellow, and purple makeup. The fly hairs growing from the scratches on Brundle's back were made from monofilament fishing wire that was trimmed, tapered, and tinted black.
- [STAGE 2] (on view from the scene where the manic Brundle storms the city's streets and then enters the bar up through the scene where he discovers the truth about his fusion with the fly by checking his computer's records): It looks as though Brundle's has a bad case of acne, as his face is full of what appear to be pimples, warts and bumps (and more lesions appear on his face as time goes on). There are also some small fly hairs growing out of various areas of his face. Many more such hairs are growing out of the scratches on his back. Brundle's entire body is becoming subtly discolored, and his fingers are swollen, blotchy, and have loose nails. Plastic warts and pimples were applied to Goldblum's face. He wore foam-rubber fingertips for the nail-pulling scene.
- [STAGE 3] (on view in the scene where Veronica visits Brundle after his one-month period of isolation): Brundle's face is lumpy and discolored. His hair is thinning (with visible bald spots) and he has no eyebrows. He must now walk with the aid of a pair of canes (as a result of the changes to the internal structure of his body) and vomits digestive enzymes on his food in order to dissolve it. His right ear falls off in this stage. Goldblum wore a full face/neck foam-rubber appliance with wig. The "vomit drop" was made from eggs, honey, and milk.
- [STAGE 4-A] (on view in the scene where Brundle demonstrates his wall-crawling and "vomit-drop" abilities to Veronica): Brundle has lost all of his fingernails and toenails, as well as both ears. More of his hair has fallen out, and his teeth are crooked (with receding gums). His face and arms are lumpy and deformed, and coarse insect hairs are popping up all over his body. A hernia-like bulge has developed on the lower left side of his torso. Sticky, cushion-like pads have appeared on Brundle's hands and feet, giving him the ability to cling to walls. The index and middle fingers of his right hand are webbed together with a flap of flesh, and are starting to fuse together. Some of the toes on Brundle's feet are clustering and fusing together. Brundle's inner structure has changed enough so that he no longer needs to walk with the aid of canes, and his natural posture is now a hunched-over one. Goldblum wore foam rubber appliances on his head, neck, arms, feet, and abdomen. Various pieces of foam were put under his clothes to suggest a missshapen form underneath. He also wore another wig with sparce hair, and custom-made dentures to show Brundle's crooked teeth.
- [STAGE 4-B] (not seen in the final cut of the film; appears only in the deleted "Monkey-Cat/ insect leg-amputation sequence that can be seen on the 2005 Fly Collector's Edition DVD): Essentially the same as Stage 4-A, but now Brundle is completely naked. He's lost his genitals, his buttocks have fused together, and his hips have become enlarged. The hernia-like bulge in his side is very noticable now, and eventually bursts open to reveal a small, fly-like appendage that is messily amputated by the horrified Brundle. This stage used the same sculpting for the face and arms as the Stage 4-A makeup appliances did, but since the scene revealed the entirety of Brundle's deformed body, Goldblum was required to wear the first of two full-body, foam-rubber bodysuits designed for the film.
- [STAGE 5] (on view from the point where Brundle loses his teeth up until the moment when his jaw is ripped off): Brundle is nearing the end of his metamorphosis. His hair is almost entirely gone, and his head has become swollen and misshapen, with his face becoming even more deformed. The right eyelid is puffed up and the left eye is enlarged. The index and middle fingers on Brundle's right hand have fused together, and the pinky fingers of both hands are "dead" and vestigial. The middle finger of the left hand has swollen grotesquely. Brundle loses a number of teeth in this stage, and the open wound in his torso (from the deleted "Monkey-Cat" sequence) is clearly visible. Later on, Veronica Quaife accidentally tears Brundle's jaw off, beginning STAGE 6. Goldblum wore a second full-body suit similar to the one seen in Stage 4-B, but this version featured more exaggerated deformities. Goldblum also wore special dentures with missing teeth and custom-made contact lenses that made one eye appear bigger than the other. The most complete makeup job in the film, this stage took nearly six hours to apply to the actor. The shots of Brundle's jaw flexing in a non-human way so as to vomit corrosive enzymes on Stathis Borans, as well as the shots of Brundle's jaw being ripped off, were accomplished with mechanized, full-bust puppet replicas of the character. In a shot deleted from the film, Brundle ejects an eight-inch proboscis to suck up the remains of Borans's foot, a sequence that also used a mechanized bust. This was the last stage of Brundlefly's transformation to involve actor Jeff Goldblum.
- [STAGE 6] (seen when Brundlefly tosses Veronica into Telepod 1 and then steps into Telepod 2): Brundle's dead and decaying outer layer of skin falls off to reveal his final incarnation, the entity previously dubbed "Brundlefly" by the diseased scientist. This grotesque, human-insect hybrid creature has a misshapen head with antennae, insect eyes with enlarged eyelids, and a proboscis. The torso is somewhat segmented, like an insect's, and the hips are enlarged and deformed. The right leg reverses its joint to become reverse-bending and Brundle's dead human foot is shaken loose. The creature's new, hoof-like foot ends in a pair of insect claws. The left leg is vaguely humanoid, but there is an extra joint beneath the knee, and the foot consists of three large, deformed toes that are tipped by insect claws. The left arm is humanoid, and terminates in a deformed, human-type hand with stubby, vestigial fingers. The right arm features a distorted and elongated hand that has two long, tubular fingers (which are also tipped with insect claws). This ultimate fusion of man and insect was brought to life throught the use of various cable-controlled and rod-operated puppets.
- ["STAGE" 7] (seen in The Fly's final moments, after Brundlefly is merged with a section of Telepod 2): After its failed attempt to reclaim some semblance of humanity by merging with Veronica Quaife, Brundlefly is accidentally fused with a large chunk of its own sending telepod. The resulting fusion of man, insect, and machine crawls out of the receiving pod, mortally wounded and in terrible agony. In a last gesture of humanity, the thing that was once Seth Brundle silently begs Veronica to end its life, and she does. This final incarnation of Seth Brundle, technically not a part of his metamorphosis into Brundlefly, was dubbed the "Brundlething" or "Brundlebooth" by the film's crew. The pathetic creature was created as a rod puppet with cable-controlled facial features.
Trivia
- Originally a project for Robert Bierman to direct.
- It took nearly five hours to apply the most extensive makeup stages to actor Jeff Goldblum.
- The Chris Walas, Inc. designers studied graphic books on disease as a starting point for their "Brundlefly" makeup/creature designs. The final "Brundlefly" creature is horribly deformed and asymmetrical. This reflects director David Cronenberg's idea that the creature shouldn't be a giant fly (a common misconception about the film), but rather a literal fusion of a man and an insect that embodies elements of both.
- This film is the origin of the commonly used phrase "Be afraid. Be very afraid". (See below) This was also a tagline for the film as well as "Something went wrong in the lab today ... something very wrong".
- The 2005 Collector's Edition DVD version of the film includes a variety of deleted scenes. Of particular note is a legendary scene in which a desperate Seth Brundle, already quite far along into his metamorphosis (in a transitional makeup stage that appears only in this one scene), attempts to merge an alley cat and a baboon (the same one that Brundle successfully teleported earlier in the film) together, as a test run for his "cure" seen at the end of the film. However, the resulting "monkey-cat" creature comes out terribly deformed and attacks Brundle, and he ends up beating the two-headed creature to death with a metal pipe to end its misery. The sequence goes on to show a disturbed Brundle scaling the wall of his lab up to the roof, only to feel a pain in his side (specifically, in the hernia-like bulge seen in the final cut of the film when Brundle first demonstates his wall-crawling powers). He accidentally slips off the roof, slides down the wall, lands on a metal awning, and watches as a small, fly-like leg emerges from his side. Horrified by this new appendage, Brundle amputates it with his teeth.
- Cronenberg was intrigued when he first read Charles Edward Pogue's screenplay (Pogue was the film's initial writer), but agreed to sign on as director only if he would be allowed to rewrite the script. Producer Stuart Cornfeld revealed on the Collector's Edition DVD that prior to Cronenberg's involvement Walon Green attempted to rewrite Pogue's script, but that his adaptation proved unsatisfactory.
- The film was spoofed in the episode "Treehouse of Horror VIII" from The Simpsons, when Bart tries to use a teleportation machine to become a superhero half-man half-fly. However, the machine only ends up swapping his head with the fly's, much like the original 1958 film.
- Much of the concept of the 1988 episode "Enter The Fly" in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is based on The Fly. Baxter Stockman and a fly mix their DNA together.
- The last portion of "Day of the Tentacle" shows the three player characters to try to travel in time simultaneously. Dr Ed warns them 'Haven't you seen The Fly?'. Indeed the characters arrive in a single combined body. However much later it is revealed that all three aren't mutated, as they first thought, but that they just have been entangled in one's clothes.
- An episode of Jimmy Neutron involved a similar teleportation-pod accident, in which Juimmy accendatally "splices" with his friend's pet hamster. However, only their heads are switched.
- The Invader Zim episode Bolognius Maximus pays tribute to several scenes from The Fly. On the DVD commentary for the episode the creator of the show, Jhonen Vasquez, said it was supposed to be like "The Fly", only stupid. A quote from the film is also used in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac issue #4, both comic and T.V. show having been created by the same person.
- The Spongebob Squarepants episode "SquidBob TentaclePants" takes its entire premise from The Fly.
- Michael Keaton was allegedly offered the role of Seth Brundle but turned it down.
Quotes
(first line)Seth: "What am I working on? Uhhh ... I'm working on something that will change the world and human life as we know it."
Seth: "Don't be afraid."
Veronica: "No. Be afraid. Be very afraid."
(At Brundle's lab, Veronica finds him scaling the walls.)
Seth: "I seem to be stricken by a disease with a purpose, wouldn't you say? Maybe not such a bad disease after all."
Veronica: "I can't stay here."
Seth (jumps onto floor): "No, no, no! Why not? Why can't you?"
Veronica: "I can't take it ... It's too much."
Seth: What's there to take? The disease has just revealed its purpose. We don't have to worry about contagion anymore ... I know what the disease wants."
Veronica: "What does the disease want?"
Seth: "It wants to ... turn me ... into something else. That's not too terrible, is it? Most people would give anything to be turned into something else."
Veronica: "Turned into what?"
Seth: "Whadda you think, a fly? Am I becoming a hundred-and-eighty-five pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming ... Brundlefly. Don't you think that's worth a Nobel Prize or two?"
Seth: "You have to leave now, and never come back here. Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects ... don't have politics. They're very ... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first ... insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but ... I'm afraid ...(groans)"
Veronica:"I don't know what you're trying to say!"
Seth: "I'm saying ... I'm saying I-I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man ... and loved it. But now the dream is over ... and the insect is awake."
Veronica: "No...No, Seth ..."
Seth: "I'm saying ...I'll hurt you if you stay."
Seth: "Help me. Help me be human."
Veronica: "How?"
Seth (indicating the appropriate telepods): "Well, I go there, and you go there. We come apart, and then we come together there. You, me and the baby. Together."
Veronica: "No..."
Seth: "We'll be the ultimate family. A family of three, joined together in one body...more human than I am alone."
Veronica: "No!"
Cast
Jeff Goldblum — Seth BrundleGeena Davis — Veronica Quaife
John Getz — Stathis Borans
External links
See also
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