The Fly

1 9 8 6 (USA)

Despite the goo and the typical David Cronenberg obsessions with disease and mutation, this superbly imaginative re-tooling of 1950s schlock classic The Fly is at its core an epic love story - a melodrama with the ultimate tear-jerker ending.

Until The Fly, Cronenberg had remained an acquired taste and a well-guarded secret - largely because of the off-putting intellectual nature of his films. Like Stanley Kubrick he was accused by his detractors of emotional coldness - and there was some truth to the charges. 

His early Canadian films (typified by Rabid and Shivers) investigated their horrific subject matters with a chilly, clinical intensity. The Fly changed all that.

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) messes with nature via his prototype teleportation pods, and in doing so creates a monster who will in the end destroy him -only in this variation he is both monster and victim simultaneously.

He reveals his secret teleportation project to Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) in an effort to woo her, and she gives him the clue as to why his project is failing - just after they first have sex.

Seth rashly teleports himself avec fly when he is drunk (and to get back at Veronica after their first tiff) and after his prolonged, brilliantly-realized transformation there is a gut-wrenching ending as Veronica tearfully moves a shotgun towards Brundlefly, now merged with half a telepod, while he mutely appeals for her to pull the trigger.

The Fly II was released in 1989. This was a desperate cash-in directed by the original Fly's special effects man, Chris Walas.