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In 1986 20th Century Fox Studios released the remake of The Fly upon the world. Directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeff Goldblum as the scientist Seth Brundle and Geena Davis as the Science Journalist and eventually Brundle’s love interest, Veronica Quaife. Why in ’86 everyone thought this was such a great movie is still way beyond me. And, as I watch it again, the special effects still aren’t that impressive. Even if you take in account that it was filmed in ’86. If you take away the campiness of the movie The Evil Dead by Sam Raimi its effects are more impressive then what was put into The Fly, especially if you consider the difference in movie budgets. From the inside out baboon, to what was supposed to be a complicated computer that looks like it could have appeared in the original Star Trek series in the 60’s, I find none of it exhilarating or worthwhile. And of course, Goldblums acting style, or lack of acting style, hasn’t changed in the last 100 years. Ok, maybe it’s only been 30 or so but still I digress. It’s especially not Academy Nomination worthy as Ebert from the self-proclaimed x-film critic duo Roger and Ebert had proclaimed upon the movie’s release. Geena Davis’s portrayal as Veronica is manageable and adequate for the most part through the film until you get to the end of the movie. Her fake crying and whining is borderline annoying and overacted, making it very unconvincing The movie centers itself around Brundle’s latest invention that he is completing. He’s been building it under the radar of the science community and no one knows about it until he meets Veronica at a party held by Bartok Science Industries. Brundle convinces her to come back to his place to see the project “that will change the world as we know it.” Upon using Veronica’s stocking for the demonstration of the “designer phone booths”, he teleports it from one teleporter to the other. Veronica is naturally amazed by this feat and her journalistic instincts go into overdrive wanting to know all about it and about the man behind it. Bundle starts to indulge his findings to Veronica when he realizes that she is secretly taping their conversation. He demands for the tape to be destroyed knowing that his whole work isn’t completed yet and that the world isn’t ready for this new method of transportation. She resists him at first claiming all should know about it until Brundle convinces her to document the experiments until he has it perfected, and her being the only journalist with this knowledge will be enriched beyond her dreams. His first attempt at teleporting a baboon is a failure, turning it inside out. Of course, after making some tweaks and adjustments on the oversized primitive looking 80’s computer, he tries a second attempt at teleporting another baboon and is successful. Overjoyed with his success he wants to spend a romantic evening with Veronica to celebrate the successful experiment. She abruptly leaves before they have a chance to celebrate. A drunk and jealous Seth thinks that she left to rekindle her relationship with her interfering Ex, Stathis Boran (John Getz) and decides that the second baboon is perfectly healthy and that he will show her for her infidelity by teleporting himself while she is gone and, she, in turn, will be missing the greatest moment in science history. Unaware that a common housefly has landed in the pod with him, he accidentally teleports the both of them. The computer, not distinguishing them as two individual species, combines them as one. Shortly after the “successful” teleportation, Brundle reconciles with Veronica. Showing a heightened amount of strength, endurance, and sexual prowess, he tries to at first passively convince, and eventually forcibly convince Veronica to teleport herself. She adamantly refuses and is eventually thrown out of the warehouse by Seth claiming she couldn’t “keep up” with him. Along with the heightened strength and endurance, his arrogance and anger also becomes heightened as he starts to transform into a new genetic species he later dubs as “Brundlefly”. The next morning, Veronica arrives at the warehouse in time to prevent Brundle from forcibly teleporting Tawny, a barfly that Brundle had picked up the night before. Tawny runs away and Veronica is left with Brundle, trying to warn him that something is happening to him. But he throws her out of his warehouse and tells her never to return. After she leaves, he goes into his bathroom, and starts to peel off his fingernails. Horrified by this, he goes back to check his telepod computer readout of his first teleportation and realizes that something had gone wrong during it, and that he was now a hybrid genetic species of human and fly. During the month of Brundlefly’s self-imposed isolation period, Veronica finds out that she is pregnant and not sure if she was impregnated before or after Brundle’s transforming teleportation. In fear that it was afterwards she goes to an abortion clinic to have the abortion done as soon as possible, and is kidnapped by Brundlefly and taken back to his apartment. There he reveals his last ditch effort to save himself. He will use all three telepods to fuse himself, Veronica, and their unborn child into one entity. He traps her into telepod 1 and enters telepod 2. As the computer's timer counts down to the activation of the fusion sequence, the wounded Stathis Borans manages to shoot the power cables connected to Veronica's telepod with his shotgun, severing Telepod 1's connection to the computer and allowing Veronica to escape unharmed. Seeing what has happened, Brundlefly tries desperately to get out of the telepod as the fusion of him and metal fragments from telepod 1 fuse together. Slowly climbing out of the telepod, he silently begs Veronica to end his life with the shotgun. Pause….Fire…..Done….. The story is a copacetic take on the original, unlike most of Hollywood remakes now a day. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory anyone? I do like the twist of her being pregnant, even though that is standard fair for movies now, but it works well for this storyline. It added a favorable twist to an already complicated relationship. But unfortunately, Goldblum’s acting style is annoying by about…..ohhhh…….say….the third sentence he says. Since it takes him ten minutes to get out those three sentences with his four minute “dramatic” pause between each one. The second disc has quite a few extras that only fans of the movie will enjoy. Documentaries such as Making of the Fly, Interviews of the producer, director and editor, Make-up and Creature designer and the director of the original The Fly movie have all been added. Four deleted Scenes, and two extended scenes and a section called Written Works that include such things as George Langelaan’s original short story, Charles Edward Pogu’s original screenplay and Cronenberg’s rewrite which were about the only things I found interesting. The two disc release is great if you are a fan of the movie, but otherwise I would stay away from it like it was soaked in fly digestive enzymes. -jason-
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