The Fly is a 1986 American science-fiction psychological body horror film directed and co-written by David Cronenberg. Produced by Brooksfilms and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the film stars Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz. Loosely based on George Langelaan's 1957 short story of the same name and the 1958 film of the same name, The Fly tells of an eccentric scientist who, after one of his experiments goes wrong, slowly turns into a fly-hybrid creature. The score was composed by Howard Shore and the make-up effects were created by Chris Walas, along with makeup artist Stephan Dupuis.
The Fly was released on August 15, 1986, to massive acclaim by critics and audiences, with praise mainly regarding the special effects and Goldblum's performance. It grossed $60.6 million at the box office against its nine-million-dollar budget, becoming the largest commercial success of Cronenberg's career. Walas and Dupuis' work on the film resulted in their winning an Academy Award for Best Makeup, the only Oscar won by a film directed by Cronenberg. A sequel, directed by Walas, was released in 1989.
Plot[]
Brilliant but eccentric scientist Seth Brundle meets science journalist Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife at a meet-the-press event held by Bartok Science Industries, the company funding his work. He takes her back to the laboratory of his warehouse home and asks her to exclusively document his invention: two pods that can teleport objects between them. While the "telepods" can transport inanimate objects perfectly, they mutilate live tissue, as demonstrated when a baboon is ripped apart after being teleported.
As they experiment with the invention, Seth and Ronnie begin to form a relationship. Using two steaks, one a control and one teleported, Seth discovers that the machine is creating a synthetic version of biological material rather than the object itself. To solve the problem, he reprograms the system to understand the makeup of living tissue, and he successfully teleports a second baboon. Ronnie departs before they can celebrate, and Seth worries that she is rekindling her relationship with her editor Stathis Borans. She actually left to confront Stathis about a veiled threat, spurred by his jealousy of Seth, to publish the telepod story without her consent. Seth teleports himself alone, unaware that a housefly had entered the transmitter pod with him. He emerges from the receiving pod seemingly normal.
After Seth and Ronnie reconcile, Seth exhibits sugar cravings, as well as increased strength, stamina, and sexual potency, which he believes resulted from the teleportation "purifying" his body. When Ronnie becomes concerned about both Seth's deteriorating sanity and the strange, bristly hairs growing from a wound on his back, Seth becomes aggressive, insisting that the process is beneficial. He tries to force Ronnie to undergo teleportation but she refuses. Seth goes to a bar and partakes in an arm-wrestling match, leaving his opponent with a compound fracture. He brings a woman named Tawny back to the warehouse where they have sex, and Seth tries to coerce her into teleporting. Ronnie intervenes and Seth throws her out. When his fingernails begin falling off, he realizes that something is indeed wrong. He checks his computer's records and discovers that the telepods confused the two lifeforms, fusing him with the fly at the molecular-genetic level.
Seth continues to deteriorate, losing body parts along with his human appearance. After several weeks, he reconnects with Ronnie and reveals he is becoming a hybrid of human and insect, which he has nicknamed "Brundlefly". He has also begun vomiting digestive enzymes onto his food before eating and is able to cling to walls and ceilings. He is even losing his human mentality in favor of uncontrollable, primitive impulses.
Seth installs a fusion program into the telepod computer, planning to dilute the fly genes in his body with human DNA. Ronnie discovers she is pregnant with Seth's baby and has a nightmare of giving birth to a giant maggot. She demands that Stathis persuade a doctor to perform an abortion in the middle of the night, but Seth abducts her before the procedure can take place and begs her to carry the child to term, since it may be the last remnant of his humanity. Stathis breaks into Seth's lab with a shotgun, but Seth disables him using his corrosive vomit to destroy Stathis' hand and foot, stopping just short of vomiting acid onto his face when Ronnie screams at him to stop.
Seth reveals his final plan to Ronnie: he will use the telepods to fuse the two of them, along with the unborn child, into a single entity to become "the ultimate family". He drags her to the telepod while she tears off his jaw in the struggle. This triggers Seth's final transformation, shedding his decaying flesh to become a monstrous, insectoid-human creature. Seth traps Ronnie in the first telepod and puts himself in the other, and begins the countdown. Stathis recovers his shotgun and severs the cables connecting Ronnie's telepod to the computer. Seth breaks halfway out of his own pod, but the fusion process activates, gruesomely amalgamating him with a chunk of the telepod. Seth crawls to Ronnie and silently begs her to end his suffering. She tearfully fires the shotgun at his head, killing him instantly. As Stathis looks on, Ronnie falls to her knees, distraught but relieved that Seth's ordeal is finally over.