The Fly 1958 review

My Review on The Fly (1958)

Even though the film was dated, it wasn’t bad at all. The storyline was interesting with the idea of body parts being swapped between a human and a fly by a teleportation experiment gone wrong. 'There is something irresistable about this tale of a man who swaps heads with a housefly' (Film4.com). The creature design was probably great for its day, but looks quite silly and basic by my view. The whole film was really tame and even the death of the creature under the press was mild as hardly any blood or gore was seen. Crushing the head of something would of been incredible messy, but for the year of the film this thing was considered absurd unlike today’s standards.

The story is about a scientist named Andre Delambre who conducts teleportation experiments on various items including the pet cat which disappears and never comes back. After sending another animal through which teleports successfully he then sends himself through, unknowingly that a fly was also in the chamber with him. Both Andre and the fly have swapped body parts. He has a head and arm of a fly and the fly has the head and arm of a human. 'This desperate 'double' struggle cleverly detracts from the cheap-looking monster effects and allows a dramatic and quite poignant film to form'. (BBC Films review) In the end he destroys his work and himself with the help of his wife. Helene kills him by crushing his arm and head under the press at a factory.

When she tells the story as to why she killed him and tried to explain what he had become and the only proof she had was the fly with the human head and arm which had escaped. The detective thought she was insane until he saw the fly in the garden caught in a spider web. 'With a tiny, screaming human's head, trapped by a spider on its web'.(The New York Times) He killed the half human fly in the web and thus committed murder himself. After he had done this he now believed what had really happened to Andre and made Helene's murder look like suicide instead.