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The 1950’s sci-fi classic The Fly, hooked viewers in with a premise that was more than just cheap monster movie. It combined a detective story with science fiction to create one of the genre’s most memorable films.

 

Inspector Francois Delambre is trying to figure out what happened to Andre, a scientist who has died in a strange accident in his lab. Andre’s wife Helene admits her guilt, but Delambre thinks there’s more to the story. The movie continues in flashbacks, and various people from the scientist’s life gradually paint a picture of how Andre was experimenting with teleportation – a machine that could disassemble a body at the molecular level and reassemble it somewhere else.

 

Andre had developed this machine and was attempting to teleport himself. Just as the experiment began, a fly flew into one of the machines, and when Andre emerged from the second machine, his DNA was combined with the insect’s, turning him into a cross between a human and a fly. The story was tragic, as well as strange and frightening, and ended with a bizarre coda that showed what happened to the fly.

 

The well-written screenplay was penned by James Clavell, who went on to write blockbuster novels such as Shogun. The cast, featuring Vincent Price as a good guy, played the off-beat material on the straight side. The result was a big hit for 20^th Century Fox, and resulted in two sequels, Return Of The Fly and Curse of the Fly.

Director David Cronenberg released a successful remake in 1986 starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, and that film led to it’s own sequel, The Fly II.

The original film is still a perennial classic, combining science fiction, detective story, off-beat humor, and a dose of both tragedy and chills.