The Fly (1986)

The Fly (1986) is David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 science-fiction film, itself drawn from George Langelaan’s short story. Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist whose teleportation experiment splices him with a housefly. Geena Davis plays the journalist who falls in love with him while the splice gets worse. Twentieth Century-Fox released the film in the United States on August 15, 1986. Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis won the Academy Award for makeup. The tagline was “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

At a glance

Release date	August 15, 1986 (United States)
Director	David Cronenberg
Writers	Charles Edward Pogue and David Cronenberg
Starring	Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz
Runtime	96 minutes
Rating	R
Genre	Body horror, science fiction
Budget	About $15 million
Box office	About $40.5 million domestic; about $60 million worldwide

Plot summary

Seth Brundle is a brilliant, socially awkward physicist working alone in a warehouse laboratory financed by Bartok Science Industries. At a meet-the-press party he offers Veronica Quaife, a reporter, a look at something that is not ready. The something is a set of teleportation pods that can move an object from one booth to another by disintegrating it and rebuilding it. Inorganic matter works. A baboon does not come back alive. Brundle keeps at it. Veronica starts sleeping at the lab as often as she files copy. Her editor and former boyfriend, Stathis Borans, wants the story and wants her back.

Jealous of Stathis, and drunk, Brundle puts himself through the pods. He misses the housefly in the booth with him. The computer, doing what it was built to do, fuses the two genetic patterns into one. At first Brundle feels better than he ever has. Strength, appetite, and stamina all jump. Then his body starts shedding parts it no longer needs. Fingernails, teeth, and skin give way to something that is still Brundle and no longer only Brundle. He films the change and names it. Veronica, pregnant, has to decide what she is willing to bring to term.

Spoiler section: the ending

Brundle tries to force a three-way teleportation that would fuse himself, Veronica, and the pregnancy into a new organism. Stathis intervenes and is maimed. Veronica breaks the pod door. The fusion fails halfway. What comes out is no longer able to speak. It puts the shotgun Veronica is holding against its own head. She fires.

Production and behind the scenes

Producer Stuart Cornfeld brought the remake to Cronenberg after an earlier draft by Pogue had already been written. Cronenberg rewrote it away from a monster-on-the-loose story and toward a disease story. Brundle does not wake up with a fly head, as Al Hedison does in the 1958 film. He deteriorates. Cronenberg has described the film as a metaphor for aging and for illness, written in the middle of the AIDS crisis without being an AIDS film. The laboratory is a loft, not a government base. There are three principal characters. The scale is a love affair that becomes a medical chart.

Goldblum and Davis began a relationship during the shoot. Their scenes use that ease and then take it apart. Walas’s crew built a sequence of appliances, from early skin mottling to the final fused creature, so Goldblum could play Brundle for as long as a human face was still in the frame. The last stage, often called the Brundlefly, was a full-body suit operated from inside and from off camera. Howard Shore wrote the score. Fox marketed the film with the “be afraid” line, which came from a Mel Brooks note. Brooks’s company, Brooksfilms, produced it, and he kept his name off the advertising so audiences would not expect a comedy.

The film opened in August 1986 to strong reviews and about $40.5 million in the United States and Canada, a clear hit on a $15 million budget. Walas and Dupuis won the makeup Oscar. A sequel, The Fly II (1989), directed by Walas, follows Veronica’s son and is a different kind of movie.

Cast

Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle
Geena Davis as Veronica Quaife
John Getz as Stathis Borans
Joy Boushel as Tawny
Leslie Carlson as Dr. Brent Cheevers

Trivia

Cronenberg has a cameo as a gynecologist in Veronica’s nightmare.
The baboon that fails the early test was nicknamed “the other Brundle” on set. A second baboon survives the later, successful test.
Goldblum stayed in the later makeup for hours. Eating scenes were scheduled around how much of his mouth was still available.
The line “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” was used in trailers before it was widely known as a catchphrase. The film made it one.
Pogue’s earlier draft kept more of the 1958 plot, including a fly with a human head. Cronenberg dropped that image.
Shore’s score avoids stingers. The body horror is played as tragedy, which is why the last shotgun beat lands as grief.

Trailer

How Cronenberg Remade The Fly

Little White Lies breaks down how David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake differs from the 1958 original: