The Fly (1958)

Director: Kurt Neumann                                Writer: James Clavell
Film Score: Paul Sawtell                              Cinematography: Karl Struss
Starring: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall

The Fly is one of the all time classics of science-fiction, and even though it was effectively remade in the eighties with Jeff Goldblum it retains all of the power to thrill audiences as it did in the fifties. Whether it actually does today is another matter, as it’s a very talkative film. Based on the short story by Geroge Langelaan, it is very much an epistolary film, told in flashback by Patricia Owens after being arrested for killing her husband. Add to that the bravura performance of David Hedison, superb supporting roles by Vincent Price and the venerable Herbert Marshall, a convincing performance by child actor Charles Herbert, the big, Technicolor widescreen visuals, and it’s no wonder it has retained it’s popularity through the decades.

When Owens is ready to give her confession she begins with Hedison’s invention a matter disintegrator-integrator machine than can transport matter. But when he demonstrates transporting a dish it integrates backward. After working out the kinks he sends himself with perfect results as well. But then he gets lazy and doesn’t realize when a fly gets into the machine with him. The results, while physically impossible, are cinematically brilliant. His human sized head and arm are turned into a fly head and arm. Meanwhile, the counterpart fly with the small human head and arm flies away. Much of the second half of the film is the desperate attempt by Owens and young Charles Herbert to catch the fly so that he can transport himself with it again and reverse the process. Soon the hopelessness of the quest becomes obvious, however, and he asks his wife to help him kill himself.

Though Vincent Price is in the film, it’s not really his movie. Hedison is the mad scientist, obsessed with his new invention and of course the victim of its failure. The lab is just updated Frankenstein gear, with computers and circuit boards and neon lights. The impossibilities are charming rather than ruinous. The cat that disappears in a lab accident and meows in the void is ridiculous, and the large fly head and arm is ludicrous but the reveal is great . . . it all works so brilliantly. It’s a beautiful looking fifties film and the incongruity of the setting with the subject matter is also part of what makes it so wonderful. It’s great seeing Marshall at the end of his career, and in a small part is veteran character actress Kathleen Freeman. Future novelist James Clavell wrote the screenplay, his first in Hollywood before going on to pen The Great Escape and To Sir, With Love. Director Kurt Neumann had made B pictures in Hollywood for years, but died shortly after the film premiered and never knew how successful it was.

The essay in The B List by Chris Fujiwara identifies the juxtaposition of the banal fifties setting with the monstrous subject matter as the real impetus for the film’s success, a destruction of the fifties perfection. Kind of like a fly in the punchbowl. There is also a subversive element that associates Hedison’s machine with television, subliminally telling the audience that TV is evil and destroying the perfection of cinema. Another association Fujiwara makes is to Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” But that has never worked for me as an allegory because of the high regard society has for scientists, especially in the fifties. Also, the idea that the film is some sort of comment on the destruction of humanity rings false for me as well. The real dehumanization in the fifties isn’t the atomic monster, it’s the banality of the everyday world, the neatly apportioned house, the wife in pearls, the Technicolor perfection of life. That, was the real horror. The Fly just makes it visible.