The Fly (1958)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Am I Missing Something?

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Not quite the classic that I expected, I found myself rather bored at times with this inventive but often painfully slow moving science fiction/horror film. It surrounds the flashback to Patricia Owens explaining to brother in law Vincent Price why she killed her husband, an act she claims was not murder. His death, in a metal crusher, leads to her being put under observation for being insane, and that leads her to tell her story to Price and police inspector Herbert Marshall. Through flashbacks, the experiments of he'd husband, David Hedison, are examined, and his alterations lead to a strange transformation that is shockingly ugly, but takes nearly a third of the film to be revealed. When it does out of nowhere come out, more questions come up than answers. Why this has a cult following is not surprising, but the fact that the mystery takes this long to get off the ground makes the film painfully slow at times. There are a few sequences that have gotten classic scene status, but those don't come until the film's climax. That means that Price and Marshall are off screen for much of the film, turning their parts into near cameos. Veteran Disney villain Betty Lou Gerson plays Owen's stern nurse, with veteran character actress Kathleen Freeman the confused maid trying to help Owens find the white headed fly. Charles Herbert plays Hedison and Owen's son, unaware of what is going on concerning his father. The conclusion, one of the famous scenes, comes out of nowhere, and really in retrospect of all that's happened, seems to be totally out of place, and changes the whole mood of the film up until then. This is a real curiosity to me, more because I don't understand how this got a cult following.

There is a reason this is still a hyped Sci-Fi Horror of the 1950s. It's first and foremost a Drama but the aspect of the Sci-Fi Horror will take center stage.It is a very good movie concerning the scientist Andre Delambre and his wife Helene. Helene calls François Delambre, Andre's brother, with some very bad news as the story begins. Later we learn that Andre is working on a teleportation machine, he shows his wife and she is delighted. But one day disaster strikes - it's Andre that it happens to and it concerns a fly.I find the most haunting scene of all was with the cat. The echo of it's meow when the experiment failed... chilling.The main differences between The Fly 1958 and 1986 are: 1) 1958 two separate entities (man and fly), 1986 man and fly are fused as one.2) 1958 is much less graphic but has a more satisfying story. 1986 is more graphic. It is relying more on the special effects than the story but the story is still pretty good but less satisfying. Both films are very tragic and worth watching.I love both the 1958 and 1986 films but the 1958 has the edge for me personally. I love the way the 1958 story is told and Vincent Price adds an extra special touch.8.5/10

I have just finished the movie The Fly from 1958. It's about a scientist who ends up having a horrific accident when and experiment with his new device he invented that can make objects go from one end of the room to next in a matter of seconds goes wrong. A fly gets trapped with him when he tries to use the device on himself. Then the hunt is on for the fly that has a white head and leg....but it's found too late. What a thrilling movie to watch! I recommend it if you like science fiction movies! It gets a high rating from me! I enjoyed watching this movie and I hope that my review gets you to want to watch this classic example of science fiction at it's best! Enjoy!

Although it now looks inevitably outdated, this film is one of the best examples of the fantastic and sci-fi genre made in Hollywood in the second half of the 1950s - Them!, The Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, etc. Unlike the others, this one was shot in colour and also in Cinemascope, and it has two well- known names in the cast. Vincent Price, the most European of all American actors, had not established yet his status as an icon of the horror and fantastic genre –the Roger Corman films would help him to achieve that-, and Herbert Marshall, although never a leading star, he certainly was one of the most recognisable and solid supporting actors of the studio era. The Fly is about a scientific experiment going wrong. And when atomic energy is involved, one can be sure that the result is not only going to be disastrous but also gruesome. We have seen the tele-transportation process hundreds of times in Star Trek, and because of that we take it almost for granted even if we know it is sheer fantasy. But, who knows if it won't be a possibility in two or three hundred years from now? As André says to his wife Helene "If fifty years ago someone had explained to my father the concept of television, he would have laughed his head off" It is an interesting idea and by no means ridiculous. André succeeds tele-transporting a saucer and a newspaper, and all seems to be under control. Full of confidence, he then tries with the family cat, and it is there when things go awry. The poor animal disintegrates all right, but then it doesn't materialise again as expected. His atoms go lost forever in the limbo of infinity. Andre should take this as a warning and stop playing Dr Frankenstein, but he is too obsessed with his dream by now and won't give it up. The successful experiment with a guinea pig, a few days later, restores his confidence. We never see him trying the experiment on himself, which I think was a wise decision by the director because then it puts us in Helene's place when she first enters the laboratory after the mutation. We learn that André suffered an accident, he keeps his head covered with a cloth, he can't speak and he is desperate to find a particular fly. We can guess he has been disfigured, but then, what does a fly have to do with it? The film keeps us in suspense as the wife, the little boy and the foolish maid go around the house trying to catch the fly in question in what is an almost comical sequence: the wife is almost paranoid, the kid thinks it is just a game, and the maid thinks that her lady has lost one or two screws all of a sudden. The scene in which Helene snatches the cloth off André's head to see his face, revealing so his nightmarish mutation, is still quite shocking for today's standards, and the make-up is remarkably good with those balloon-like eyes and the fly's snout twitching all the time. Apparently, the actress didn't see the make-up until the very moment the scene was shot, and so her hysterical reaction was totally spontaneous and genuine. That was another clever idea of the director. And another interesting detail he offers us is the POV shot of the fly in multi- images, because that is believed to be how insects see the world. Their eyes are formed by hexagonal tubes that are supposed to give them a cell-like vision. The Fly is definitely a piece that couldn't be missed in my film collection.