Main Cast: Vincent Price, Patricia Owens, Herbert Marshall, Kathleen Freeman
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 94 minutes
Plot
Wealthy Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) is discovered late at night in the factory owned by her husband Andre (David Hedison). Helene stands beside a huge metal press, which has crushed the head and arm of her husband. Held for murder, the near-catatonic Helene refuses to tell anyone--not even Andre's brother Francois (Vincent Price)--why she did it. Francois cannot help but notice that Helene reacts in mortal terror when a tiny flies zips through the room. Nor can he disregard the statement made by Helene's son Philippe (Charles Herbert) that the fly has a curious white head and leg. When Francois pretends that he's captured the fly, Helene relaxes enough to tell her story. It seems that Andre, a scientist, had been working on a matter transmitter, which he claimed could disintegrate matter, then reintegrate it elsewhere. After a few experiments, Andre tried the transmitter himself. Just as he stepped into the disintegration chamber, a fly also flew into the chamber. We aren't immediately shown the results of this, save for the fact that Andre afterward insists upon keeping his head and arm covered. Alone with her husband, Helene abruptly removes the covering, revealing that Andre now bears the head of a fly! His atoms have become mixed up with the fly, and now he is unable to reverse the procedure. Deciding that his transmitter will be a bogy rather than a blessing to mankind, Andre smashes the apparatus and burns his notes. He then instructs Helene, via body language, to crush his fly-like head and arm in the press. Neither Francois nor inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall) believe the story...until, while staring intently at a spider's web in the garden, they see a tiny entrapped fly with Andre's head and arm, tinnily screaming "Help me! Help me!" as the slavering spider approaches (If you're wondering why Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall do not look one another in the eye during this scene, it is because they couldn't deliver their dialogue without dissolving into laughter). Infinitely subtler than the admittedly excellent 1986 remake, the 1958 The Fly is one of the definitive big-budget horror films of its decade. Best bit: the prismatic "fly's eye view" of the screaming Patricia Owens. The Fly was adapted from George Langelaan's short story by James (Shogun) Clavell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
While time has added a patina of camp to The Fly, it still holds up surprisingly well. Vincent Price, often willing to ham it up in a lesser story, plays this film quite straight, to the benefit of the story, and director Kurt Neumann's pacing is thankfully subtle, beginning on a note of anxiety and maintaining an eerie unease throughout. If David Hedison and Patricia Owens don't come off as much more than the standard-issue Dedicated Scientist Meddling In What Man Should Leave Alone and his Loving But Concerned Wife, at least they walk through the clichés with conviction. Visually, The Fly is several cuts above typical 1950s sci-fi fare; Karl Struss's CinemaScope camerawork uses color and the widescreen frame with style and understated intelligence, and the effects makeup for the Human Fly (as well as the fly-sized human) still merits a startled jump. While David Cronenberg's 1986 remake certainly beats the original for visceral impact, the original The Fly still feels like one of the best fright films of its era, and its impact and influence are still being felt today. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Theobold Holsopple - Art Director, Lyle Wheeler - Art Director, Adele Balkan - Costume Designer, Charles LeMaire - Costume Designer, Kurt Neumann - Director, Merrill White - Editor, Paul Sawtell - Composer (Music Score), Bert Shefter - Composer (Music Score), Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup, Merrill White - Production Designer, Karl Struss - Cinematographer, Kurt Neumann - Producer, Eli Benneche - Set Designer, Walter Scott - Set Designer, L.B. Abbott - Special Effects, Eugene Grossman - Sound/Sound Designer, Harry M. Leonard - Sound/Sound Designer, James Clavell - Screenwriter, George Langelaan - Short Story Author
The film is set in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and starts with a watchman finding a man's head and arm crushed beneath a heavy metal press. A woman named Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) phones her brother-in-law, Francois Delambre (Vincent Price) to tell him that she has just murdered her husband. Francois calls in the police and she admits killing him but refuses to say why. Later, Francois tricks her into telling the story to him and Police Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall).
A Canadianscientist, Andre Delambre (David Hedison), has invented a teleportation device (although he uses the term 'disintegrater-integrater' in the film). He has a number of setbacks including his first attempt to teleport something live after he believes he has ironed out the earlier problems. The family's pet cat vanishes from one booth but does not appear in the other booth, and all that can be heard is the disintegrated cat's meow. Andre sorts out further problems and as his wife has found out what has happened to the cat, she has him promise not to use animals any more. Then, after what must have been many successful experiments, he manages to transport a guinea pig which appears unharmed from the process. Confident in the machine's abilities, he now attempts to transport himself. The first time works, but, unknown to him a fly enters the cabin with him on his second attempt, and the two are scrambled together. The scientist emerges as a half-man, half-fly hybrid — a human with a fly's head, leg and arm/claw.
His wife finds out something is wrong as she now sees him with a cloth over his head (Hedison played the character all through the film) and a hidden arm. He eventually tells his wife (through type-written messages, as he has lost his ability of speech) what has happened and she first sees his claw and screams, then later sees his fly head and screams more (seen in multiple images, presumably as a fly would see through its multiple eyes). His wife, son and maid try to find the "fly with a white head" and fail. The son had caught it just after the accident but had been made to let it go, before any of them knew what it was. Andre attempts to reverse the process to return himself to normal, by going through the disintegrater but instead, the particles of the family cat were mixed in with his anatomy. When he realizes that his mind is being overtaken by the fly's he destroys his lab, & asks his wife to end his suffering by killing him with a heavy machine press.
The inspector does not believe the story and charges her with murder but with a plea of insanity. As they come to take her away, Andre's son Philippe again finds the fly. Francois and the Inspector rush to see it. In the famous twist ending, Francois and Inspector Charas hear a tiny voice coming from a nearby spider's web. They make the dreadful discovery of a tiny creature with Andre's emaciated head and arm with the body of a fly, screaming, "Help me! Help me!" as it is about to be devoured by a large spider. The inspector, horrified by the sight, crushes the predator with a stone, inadvertently killing the fly. Francois argues that the inspector is now every bit as guilty of murder as is Helene, as he killed a fly with a human head to her killing a human with a fly's head, ironically, in a very similar manner. The two together work out a scenario in which they can make Andre's death appear as suicide (which was very likely since the transformed Andre wanted to die after realizing what he has become), ending the film on a somewhat lighter tone. The film concludes with the woman making a good recovery and playing with her son with Francois there with them.
The film is available on DVD. The commentary states that the film took only 18 days to make and unexpectedly made $3,000,000. The film was shot in CinemaScope and Terror-Color by De Luxe.
