The Fly
The Fly, American science fiction horror film, released in 1958, that was among the most influential of its era’s myriad monster movies.
The film focuses on Andre Delambre (played by David Hedison), a French Canadian scientist whose experiment with the transference of matter goes awry when a common housefly enters his laboratory’s experimentation chamber. To the horror of his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), Andre emerges from the chamber with a fly’s head and arm. The situation escalates as the insect’s anatomy and instincts slowly take over the mind and body of the scientist, who desperately tries to hide the hideous changes from the rest of his family. Realizing he is doomed to become an insect forever unless the experiment is reversed, Andre attempts to locate the fly, which now bears his head. When the search proves futile, Andre has Helene kill him. Arrested for murder, she is released when the fly is finally discovered, and then squashed, in their garden.
The Fly was based on a short story by George Langelaan that was published in Playboy magazine. Though the movie received mixed reviews, it was a box-office hit and spawned two less-successful sequels, Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of the Fly (1965). A gory but more acclaimed remake, directed by David Cronenberg, was released in 1986. A famous eerie scene in the 1958 original depicts the human-headed fly, which is caught in a spiderweb, screaming, "Help me! Help me!"
Production notes and credits
- Studio: Twentieth Century–Fox
- Director and producer: Kurt Neumann
- Writer: James Clavell
- Music: Paul Sawtell
- Running time: 94 minutes
Cast
- David Hedison (Andre Delambre)
- Vincent Price (Franƈois Delambre)
- Patricia Owens (Helene Delambre)
- Herbert Marshall (Inspector Charas)