Review #232: The Fly (1958)


This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #86: The Fly (1958)

I'd never seen any version of The Fly, but of course I feel like I knew the basic story of it through cultural osmosis. This one is told in a particular way that had me unsure of exactly what was going on (as I'm sure was the intent) but in the end it came out pretty much as I thought it would. I was tempted to detail the entire plot and discuss it with full spoilers, but I don't think that's quite necessary, so I do urge you all to watch this film if you haven't- it's quite good.

The Fly's plot is interesting in that a huge chunk (but not all) exists as a flashback, or a story being told. (If the ending were different this could be used as evidence that it's the result of an unreliable narrator; that's not the case but I feel like it could have gone either way.) We start off with the discovery that a scientist, Andre Delambre, has been killed in what seems like an industrial accident- his head and arm crushed in a hydraulic press- but when it's noticed that the press crushed him twice, his wife Helene confesses to murdering him. However, her behavior is strange- forgetting her son's name, freaking out when the nurse swats a fly- and after much prodding and the discovery of a strange white-headed housefly, she agrees to come clean to her brother François and tell him what really happened. This starts off a long flashback that encompasses most of the film, telling a story about a scientist's hubris and the lengths people will go to hide their mistakes.

There are some parts of the story that don't really make sense to me (why was Helene so concerned with finding the white-headed fly at the beginning of the film, if later her intention is to destroy it? If she was willing to act crazy to hide the truth, how and why did she agree to tell the truth once François said he would destroy the white-headed fly?) but the story of Andre's invention and how everything went so wrong so quickly truly is heartbreaking, it's tragic, and you really feel for all of the characters involved. I also think that the detail of Andre's mental state degenerating- as well as the white-headed fly's physical and mental state morphing over time too- is truly horrifying, far more horrifying than anything else in the film, and the famous "Hellllp meeeee" coming from the spiderweb made my jaw drop when it first happened. I will admit I was expecting a much more tragic and sinister ending (apparently the original story ended with Helene committing suicide to keep her husband's secrets and avoid murder charges) but I'm still happy with the ending that we got.

The performances in this film are fantastic, the effects are great, and the horror is definitely something that will stick with me for a long time. I think this is probably the best film I've watched this month (not the best one on this 100-movie bucket list, though it is up there) and I'm interested to see how the 1986 remake fares with this same story in a couple weeks!

Overall Rating: 8/10 Streams of Kitten Atoms in Space

Racy Inspiration: Apparently, this film was based on a story that originally ran in a 1957 issue of Playboy Magazine! Yowza!

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