Horrorfest 2011: The Fly (1986)

It's time for Horrorfest 2011. Like last October and the October before it, in honor of Halloween, I'm going to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days. Like last year, I'm going to stick to movies I haven't seen before. And guess what? I've never seen THE FLY!

I wrote about the original THE FLY during Horrorfest 2009. This year it's the 1986 remake directed by David Cronenberg. I've seen a few Cronenberg flicks in my day, ranging from ones I really like (VIDEODROME) to ones I could do without (CRASH). Like many of the flicks I end up watching during these "fests" THE FLY is the type of movie I kind of feel like I've basically seen before even if I haven't ever actually gotten around to watching the whole thing. Being a movie nerd, I've heard about THE FLY enough to know what I was getting into.

THE FLY stars Jeff Goldblum as an eccentric scientist (a role he'd be stuck playing the rest of his life) who has created a teleportation system with one flaw -- it doesn't seem to work on living flesh. Geena Davis is an ambitious journalist who wants to write the definitive chronicle of the creation of this miraculous device. Davis' creepy boss (John Getz) is still leering around, hoping to rekindle a previous affair between the two. Unfortunately for him, Davis would rather bone Goldblum and the two get to knocking boots right quick, between experiments.

Of course, the titular fly gets into the teleportation device with Goldblum and everything goes wrong. At first his body seems to react positively to the fusion of the human an insect genetics, but eventually his body starts disintegrating piece by piece as a monster emerges from beneath his own skin.

As usual, with Cronenberg, a lot of the material deals with the philosophical implications of what the physical world means -- what makes a human? How do we tick? What are the barriers between the outside world and the world inside of us? Are there any barriers at all? Are we just kidding ourselves? Etc.

And, as usual, all that stuff is interesting. THE FLY benefits from having a lurid plot torn from the pages of pulp sci-fi magazines and the makeup and special effects guys make sure the movie wallows extravagantly in these exploitative origins. This keeps the movie from ever taking itself too seriously or ever falling too neatly into any single paint by numbers plot -- sure, it's horror and it's sci-fi, but it also doesn't have clear heroes or villains and has its fair share of laughs along with scares. So, Cronenberg gets to have his high brow explorations while deftly avoiding the pitfall of boring the audience.

Probably the most terrifying scene in the movie involves a Geena Davis dream sequence in a clinical setting. I don't want to give it away, but it definitely counts as "horror."

Towards the end of the flick things do start getting potentially too ridiculous, but luckily as Goldblum's monster mad scientist spirals out of control, the movie comes to a swift close, and never gives the audience a chance to really question what's going on.

All in all, a good start to Horrorfest 2011 -- it was a good flick, a movie I've meant to see for a while, a remake to a flick I've already seen, and I can check another entry off the list in a famous filmmaker's body of work that I intend to see more of . Should be a good month.