The Fly (1986): Cronenberg’s Slow Horror of a Man Coming Apart

David Cronenberg’s The Fly turns a teleportation experiment into a slow, methodical horror story about a man coming apart in his own apartment. Released on August 15, 1986, the film stars Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle, a scientist who tests his own machine and steps out with something else inside him. It runs 96 minutes. It made $60.6 million at the box office, and Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for their work on it.

Seth Brundle and the Telepods

The setup is plain. Seth Brundle is brilliant and eccentric. He meets Veronica “Ronnie” Quaife, a science journalist, at a press event and brings her back to his home and laboratory. There he shows her the telepods, a set of pods that moves objects instantly from one to the other. He asks her to keep the invention secret. In exchange she gets exclusive rights to the story, and she starts documenting his work.

The machine has a flaw. It moves inanimate objects fine, but it mutilates living tissue. A baboon comes out of a test turned inside-out. That failure is the hinge the whole film swings on.

The film’s tagline:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Fly in the Pod

Seth and Ronnie become lovers. Their first sexual encounter gives him the idea to reprogram the telepod to understand living tissue. He teleports a second baboon successfully. Ronnie then leaves in a hurry to confront her editor, Stathis Borans, who has threatened to publish the story without her consent. Borans is jealous of Seth.

Seth reads the exit as betrayal. Convinced Ronnie is going back to Stathis, he teleports himself alone. A fly slips into the transmitter pod with him. The two become one. He steps out of the receiving pod looking normal.

The change comes in stages. Seth gains strength, stamina and sexual potency. He claims the teleportation purified his body. Ronnie notices bristly hairs growing from a wound on his back. His personality turns. He becomes arrogant and violent, insists the process is good for him, and tries to force her into the pod. She refuses. He walks out.

A Bar, an Arm, and Tawny

Seth goes to a bar and enters an arm-wrestling match. He breaks his opponent’s arm, a compound fracture. He brings a woman named Tawny back to his warehouse for sex.

Goldblum plays the arrogance as a kind of cheerfulness, and that is what makes it hard to watch. He is still talking like a scientist while his body stops being one.

Geena Davis plays Ronnie as a working journalist first and a girlfriend second. John Getz plays Borans as a small, jealous man. Joy Boushel plays Tawny. Leslie Carlson plays Dr. Cheevers. Howard Shore composed the score.

The Casting That Almost Was

The role of Seth Brundle nearly went elsewhere. Producer Brooks wanted Pierce Brosnan. Cronenberg rejected that. John Malkovich was the top choice and declined. John Lithgow was offered the part and turned it down, saying it was too grotesque. Michael Keaton and Richard Dreyfuss were also considered. Cronenberg proposed Goldblum because Goldblum was willing to perform with prosthetic makeup, unlike other proposed actors such as Dreyfuss.

Geena Davis was also contested. Cornfeld opposed casting her because she was Goldblum’s then-real-life girlfriend. Cronenberg wanted her. Cornfeld made him look at other actresses, and by Cornfeld’s own admission they were all disasters. Davis asked Cronenberg to play the gynecologist himself because she did not want a stranger in the role. He did.

The Fly at a Glance

What The Fly Gets Right

At 96 minutes, The Fly does not linger. It sets up the machine, breaks it, and spends its second half on the breakdown. The source says the tagline has been used in many other productions as part of popular culture. That line is doing less work than the film around it.

The film commits hard to Seth’s point of view. Davis has less to do than the part allows, and the script keeps handing the microphone back to the man.

The Fly is a horror film with a clear idea: a smart man’s certainty about his own improvement is the most dangerous thing in the room. The telepods are the plot. The fly is the accident. The ego is the disease.

1986 movies · body horror · David Cronenberg · horror movies · Jeff Goldblum · The Fly