Wednesday 22 September 2010

Film: The Fly, 1958, Kurt Neumann


On Monday, I had the chance to watch the original The Fly, a 1958, sci-fi film, directed by Kurt Neumann. As a 1950's sci-fi, B-movie as a lot of good retro aspects that I will be able to add to my narrative project.
As The Fly opens the homicide of Andre Delambre (David Hedison) a devoted scientist takes place, this act committed by his own wife, Helen Delambre (Patricia Owens), in the scientist's brother factory. Minutes after the happening and after being found by a factory worker. Helen phones desperately to her brother-in-law, Francois (Vincent Price), confessing her of her acts.
Helen being a lovely wife, and always true to her husband, makes Francois wonder if she has gone mad, So with the help of Inspector Charas ( Herbert Mashall), he is determined to find the answer of the strange crime.
Helen begins to act strangely when flies enter her room, which arises a lot of questions for Insp. Charas. After lying to Helen, Francois finally is presented with a true story of what really happened.


Although knowing that his brother was a scientist, Francois never imagined what projects his brother came up with, and when Helen explains Andre's experiment, Francois hardly believes.
Andre Melandre new invention implied teleporting objects. After a few faulty tries, Andre upgrades the machine and starts use the same newly discovered technology in animals and ultimately on himself. On the latter experiment, things goes wrong and Andre is morphed with a fly that was inside the machine. This also means that the fly morphed is genetically changed.
The only way to reverse the experiment is to find the different fly or annihilate Andre, before He gets uncontrollable.
A good case to say never play with science !



The fly is a sci-fi movie, which sits in a rather different universe. Although being a sci-fi movie , it is not populated for neither robots, nor machines, nor invasions or nor even aliens. On the other hand, it uses human science, a subject always alien to us, to produce a wrong experiment, an ultimately human mutation monster.
Being a 1950's B-movie, the film is populated with a lot of low budget acting, low budget sets, cheesy moments, although to that time I do believe it was a film that really create a sort of bad feeling, from the scene in the press, which just by imagining is painful to the scene with the spider, in which all the suspense is built for the last hit by Insp. Charas with the rock, is horrific from the faded help calling to the all look of the scene.
The acting, I do believe it was appropriated for that type of film, though many people may think is bad, I just believe that actors add to response to the script differently in those times.
The special effects alongside with the sound effects were really astonishing, the fly suit was just perfect, giving a really eerie feel to the spectator.
In my opinion, despite looking a bit outdated to this time, i do think this film was perfect for the time it was released and among others became belongs to a popular era in cinema history, the golden age for Sci-Fi- B-movies.


1 comment:

ivanka k said...

It reminds me of Kafka's Metamorphosis for some reason. There are even now movies (Splice) were scientists go to far just to find themselfs to be stupid. Why are they still doing these movies when the massage was send long time ago?? Ahh Hollywood sucks these days...