Halloween is the time of year when studios decide to empty their vaults of everything even remotely frightening and foist it upon a public who enjoys being scared. As I mentioned yesterday, the quality of the material ranges from legitimately good to downright excruciating, and as the years go on, we’re also finding the market flooded with the same material simply being reissued and re-reissued and re–re-reissued. Once in awhile, though, you get handed a film that’s either never been on DVD before or is almost impossible to find anymore, and that’s the case for 1/3 of Fox’s brand new set, “The Fly Collection,” which rounds up the fondly-remembered first two films in the saga of the Delambre family – “The Fly” and “Return of The Fly” – then also resurrects the oft-forgotten 3rd film, 1965’s “The Curse of the Fly.”
David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the original film was actually a successful modernization of the tale of a scientist whose attempts to master the technology of teleportation go awry when his DNA is accidentally melded with that of a common housefly. Unfortunately, the special effects of a ’50s film obviously can’t compete with those of an ’80s film (especially not one made for the kind of budget that Cronenberg had to work with), so a lot of people tend to dismiss the original “Fly” because, oh, well, the guy’s got a big, fake-looking fly head.
Don’t be one of those people.
In fact, Kurt Neumann’s 1958 adaptation of the George Langelaan short story worked remarkably well for its era, with Neumann wisely choosing to avoid showing the aforementioned fly head for as long as possible…and, even when we do see it, it’s not the almost-cartoonish creature that you see on the cover of the DVD set, which is actually a shot from “Return of The Fly.” The head of the creature in “The Fly” actually looks comparatively realistic, and because of the emotional build-up to the reveal, we actually find ourselves not focusing on it nearly as much as we otherwise might have. “The Fly” is very much a tale like “The Phantom of the Opera,” with scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) accidentally fusing himself with the fly in the process of testing his own invention, then pleading for his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), to assist him in finding the other half of his experiment – the fly with a human head and hand, of course – before his brain gives in to the fly side of his being. Naturally, she’s horrified by his appearance, which he hides from her for the majority of the film, but even once she’s seen how he now looks, the bond of love between them proves stronger, which is why she finally agrees to his request to kill him and destroy both his head and hand beneath a metal press (yikes!) so that no-one will know what’s happened. Inevitably, we do see the fly with a human’s head and hand, and although the special effects may be laughable by today’s standards, the horrific, high-pitched shrieking of the creature as it’s being eaten by a spider – “Help meeeeeeeeeee!” – is still creepy stuff in 2007.
