The Man in the Machine

***Spoilers*** What happens when the man you love starts disappearing from the inside out? We're diving into David Cronenberg's 1986 body horror masterpiece The Fly, where science, obsession, and decay collide into one of cinema's most devastating stories. 

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Scream Queen Approved. I'm your host, Mariah. And tonight we've got another movie review. So tonight's movie review is going to be on the 1986 version, The Fly. Um, I've I've seen this movie before, um, but it was a really, really long time ago. And I have since re-watched this movie and actually kind of gone down like a little rabbit hole of information with the director. So we're gonna get into it. I'm really excited. Okay, so the synopsis of this movie is essentially Seth Brundle is a brilliant but socially awkward scientist who invents a teleportation device. He meets a journalist by the name of Veronica Quaif. They fall for each other and he successfully teleports himself. What he doesn't realize is that a housefly slips into the pod with him and it fuses his DNA along with the fly. And during the movie, essentially, he starts feeling amazing, like he's got this superhuman strength, and he's got so much energy. Um, and then the decaying starts, you start to see him transforming piece by piece into something that's a little bit uh hideous, essentially. And uh Veronica kind of watches him through this whole process um as she realizes that the man that she loves is you know no longer being a man, he's turning into something different. Um, but yeah, that's our synopsis, and I am so sorry for the very loud fucking cicadas in the background of this recording. They are loud tonight, they haven't been this loud, but they're loud. Um, but yeah, that's our synopsis. Okay, so I'm excited to get into this cast. Um, because pretty much everybody in this cast is like one of my favorites, except for there's like one person in here that I I don't really know very well. Um but we have Jeff Goldblum, who plays Seth Brundle, he's our a scientist. We also have Gina Davis, she plays Veronica Quaif, she's our reporter, and then we have John Getz. He plays Stathis Baranis. I'm I don't know if I'm saying that right, but um he plays Veronica's um boss at her her job essentially, and he also plays like a previous love interest that she had too, and so it's kind of a tricky little triangle that they have, and then our director is David Cronenberg. You may have seen some of his work. Um, this is actually, I think, the only movie of his that I've actually seen before. Actually, no, that's not. I'll I'll take that back. That's a lie. He does a movie called Scanners. I have seen that. That's a really good movie. Um, but he's done movies like obviously he did The Fly. He did a movie called The Dead Zone, um, obviously Scanners. He also did a movie called The Brood, and then he's also done something else that I'm trying to remember what the hell it was called. Uh I want to say he did I don't I'm trying to think of things that I've heard of before. He did a movie called Spider, apparently, as well. That was in like 2002. But that's his work, and this is for this movie era. He's, you know, he directed this movie as well. So yeah, there you go. Okay, so I want to get into some of this movie's history. I am really love, I'm loving to do this whole little section of the podcast because I love digging into movie history, and like I said, I'm I'm a horror movie buff, so like digging into how things are created and how sets or how passionate somebody is about their film, it just intrigues me and I like to talk about it. So this the movie 19 this is the 1986 version. I don't know if I said that. This is not the original version, mind you. Um, there is an original version that was set back in 1958. I've never seen that one, but I actually am gonna watch it uh probably this weekend. But um this version, David Cronenberg, this was like a passion project for him. Um, he rewrote the entire script pretty much for this film. That's how big of a passion that he had for this. He wanted to do it the way that he envisioned it, and he wanted to do it in a way that would, you know, captivate the audience. And I think he did a good job. Um he also advocated heavily for Jeff Goldblum because apparently the studio um they were they didn't really want him, he wasn't really a like well-known actor, I think, at this time, and he was kind of considered as like a risky lead. And so I really love the fact that he kind of went to bat for our boy Goldblum. I mean, when you think about it, he he was in Jurassic Park, he's in some well-known movies, and I honestly feel like there sometimes in this acting industry or in Hollywood, when you don't give somebody a shot, it doesn't lead to bigger things. And this was like Jeff Goldblum's shot, and I would say he killed it. I think he did a wonderful job in this film. I think he plays Seth Brundle with the best heart, and I will get into that more and more, but I just thought that was really cool that he went to bat for Goldblum. He went to bat for our boy. Um, Gina Davis and Jeff Goldblum actually met, fell in love, and got married after this movie was over, like I guess filming was over for the on the fly. That was not something I knew. Um, I knew at one point in time they got married, but I did not know that this was the movie that set this their love in motion. So I thought that was really cute, very demure. It was very adorable. Um, and then another thing about this film is Cronenberg was, I guess, kind of watching people deteriorate around him, and he really poured that fear into Seth Brundle's transformation into the fly. Um, so just kind of getting like a little bit of into his mind, which I thought was really cool, simply for the fact that this man took his real life experiences, which is where a lot of films come from sometimes. Um, but he was taking his own real life experiences and putting that into the film and just kind of honing into the horrors of seeing somebody transform, and you you know, there's nothing you can do, you don't know what to do to help them. So I thought that was really cool. And then this was something that I thought was also really cool. This movie actually won an Oscar for not what you think, it won an Oscar for the makeup. I love that. Like, what do you mean you won an Oscar for the makeup? That that's fucking incredible. I think that's so great, and um that just makes me really, really proud of a film that back in the 80s fucking killed, like the they really did. I'm not just a hundred percent telling the truth here. Like, I was I was watching this film and I was like, wow, they really did do a good job. I mean, like, talk about we see today all of the CGI, all of the AI, all of that stuff, and going back and watching the animatronics and the makeup of how they created Seth Brundle's like transformation. Fucking just chef's kiss. Wah, you know, that's great. I love it. Um, but yeah, I thought that was really cool. Okay, let's get into some scenes to pay attention to in this movie. So at the very beginning, um, he takes, you know, Dr. Seth Grunt Brundle, he takes Veronica to his like studio, and that's where he lives, and that's where he performs his, you know, experiments, um, to see how he made his, you know, teleport teleportation device. And um you see him take her, I'm just gonna say spoilers, okay. He takes her stocking, he puts it in the teleportation device, he teleports it to the other machine. She kind of doesn't believe it at first. Um, but then he starts explaining, he's like, no, I'm not lying. Like, this is um this is a joke. I teleported your stocking to this machine. And he does kind of mention, I believe, that he has tried to do a living thing uh before and it didn't go very well. So as this movie progresses, he tries it on another living thing. He tries it on a baboon. I listen, I don't believe in animal cruelty, and I know it's just special effects, but he tries to teleport a baboon from one pod to the other, and it goes horribly wrong, and I was just like, you murderer, you murderer, I was so upset. Oh my god, that's that's that's one of the scenes to pay attention to because it goes so wrong, and and I will say the reason why you need to pay attention to is because it does go wrong, but it does set up the movie for what's about to come for Seth. Um, another scene I would pay attention to is there's a scene in this movie where he's wrestling um some pool hall guy, and they their arm wrestling. This is after he has teleported himself from one pod to another and is transforming essentially, and he snaps the guy's wrist. Talk about a cringe fucking moment. I was sitting there and I you can hear the the snap audibly happen, and I was like, my whole body seized because I was like, oh god, oh god, no, oh god, this is terrible. Oh, I don't want to look at it, I don't want to look at it, I don't want to look at it, I don't want to look at it. It was like it it had that little moment to it, essentially, and I was just like, oh fuck, this is terrible. Um, but that that scene itself is the moment you realize that his transformation isn't just physical, he's not just getting superhuman strength, it's actually changing who he is on the inside because he's feeling a little cocky, he's feeling a little naughty, he's not, you know, your your Seth Brundle anymore. He's he's changing not only physically but internally. So another little scene to pay attention to, and then the last thing I would pay attention to is his final transformation. What Cronenberg does with this final transformation, that is nightmare fuel beyond nightmare fuel, beyond nightmare fuel. Because what the fuck? I like I said, it's been a really long time since I've seen this movie, and I guess I don't fully remember what I saw. So I as I was watching this, and you see the full progression of him turning into this creature.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

I was like, oh no, you gotta get rid of it now. You gotta get rid of it now. Like, this is never gonna be okay. Just put him out of his misery for crying out loud. This ain't gonna work. It ain't gonna work. Just get rid of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

So pay attention to that final transformation, and you do see him transform, obviously, during the film. So this this final transformation is definitely the the horror that reaches out to you, and you're like, oh, this is the stuff of nightmares, got it. I okay, it's devastating, it's disgusting. The whole just ew. Ew, can I say ew? I'm gonna say ew. It's yeah, it's gross, it's it's not pretty at all, to be honest with you. Okay, so I also just want to touch on a couple of like theories that I have about this film. Um, one of the theories that I have is that this movie is sort of a metaphor for addiction. So as you see Seth transform from, you know, his normal social awkward self, um, he starts to question things. Um, there's literally a scene in this movie where he mentions like potentially pretending to be a human being and actually found his true form as being a fly. And I was like, okay, interesting theory there. But I feel like it's kind of a metaphor for people having to watch those that they love succumb to addiction. Um if you know anyone, or you know, if you've known somebody who knows somebody who's ever loved somebody with addiction, you literally are watching them lifetime transform in front of your eyes. And you watch them choose their addiction over and over and over again, and they never choose you, unfortunately. Um, but they choose their addiction, and you have to watch that, and you keep you know, it's constantly in your mind. So that was like one of my little theories that I have for this movie. I thought was kind of interesting. And then the other one I had was that I really think Seth Brundle just had something to prove. He, you know, and you kind of get this essence of male ego in this movie, um, but I really do feel like he had something to prove. He didn't wait for Veronica to get back, he went into the machine, he didn't check to make sure there was nothing else in there with him, and his teleportation device spliced him and the fly together, and this is ultimately what ends up happening when you don't take into consideration everything around you. You just go in balls to the wall, thinking you got everything down, and you just fucking you gun it, and then you don't know what happens, and this is what happens you splice yourself with a fly. So I I think there's a little bit of you know male egoness, and you know, just just more of you know, have something to prove, and then obviously about the the watching of addiction occur right in front of your face. Yeah, okay. So this movie, we're gonna talk about how this movie builds and crescendos real quick, um, before I give you my final rating. Um, so this movie build is slow, it's it's a slow build and it progresses beautifully. Um there's not you like you know, I think this movie is like an hour and a half long. It does not give you like huge jump scares or anything like that. Um, but the suspense is definitely high. You can you can feel it thick in the air. You know some shit's about to go down, and you know it's gonna have something to do with our boy Seth Brundle. So the the build-up to this movie was was done beautifully. David Cronin did a wonderful job there, and the progression of you know, after he you know, teleports himself from one pod to another with the fly, um, David does a really great job of progression with how Seth slowly but agonizingly sure transforms into the fly. So I think just wonderful movie, like overall. I love how it was done. I loved the characters. Um, Veronica played by Gina and then Seth being played by um Jeff Goldblum, which I love him. Like, who doesn't love Jeff Goldblum? And let me just say, there's like a lot of scenes in this movie where he doesn't have a shirt on, and a girl was like fanning herself over here. I was like, good lord.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

There's definitely a couple of scenes in this movie where he does not have a shirt on or he has like briefs on or something like that. I was just sitting there like, wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

I understand, Gina. I understand. I can't be mad at you for that.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I would have looked him up and down too and been like, oh yeah, that's it right there. I I get it.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

But uh this movie has great just overall performances from the actors. Um, it has a great storyline. The progression of this film is really good. Um, and then I would say the animatronics and the makeup for how Seth slowly transforms into the fly is really really good. Like, I mean really good because when you start seeing him change, it's like what the hell? Like, this is crazy. It looks like he has just like rashes on his skin at first, like he's got some sort of skin issue, but then like you start seeing his fingers, and you start seeing these little hairs. It's I won't tell you the whole thing, but the progression of the makeup during the it was just so beautifully done, and I just kept thinking to myself, I was like, I think I know how they did this, and I think I know how they made this, and like you know, it's just my my mind was spinning, and um, everybody did such a wonderful job with this film, so I I appreciated it a lot. With that being said, I am going to give this movie a 4.3 out of five, and that means this movie is Scream Queen approved, and because of that, I highly recommend that you watch this movie. Um, like I said, it's got a great cast. I mean, it there's three people that you really see throughout the film. Um, but it's got a great cast, it's got a great storyline, the progression is great, the buildup is the is probably some of the best suspense buildup I've seen. Um, the makeup in this movie is wonderful, the animatronics in this movie is great. I mean, I appreciate a good movie, and this was a really good movie, so I would suggest watching it if you've never seen it before. Or re-watch it because it's so good. I yeah, it's really a good movie, and it's it's well planned and everything did well together. So this is gonna be my last episode in this category. Yeah, you're not getting rid of me that you're not getting rid of me yet. Um no, this is gonna be my last genetics testing uh movie review for a little bit. I am moving into a completely different zone of movies starting next month, and it's gonna be creature features. So feel free to give me some suggestions to do a little movie review in the comment section. Um, I will start it off obviously in September, but you might be able to finish it for me. Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. There are episodes every Friday at 7 p.m. Central time. And with that, stay tuned, stay royal, stay terrified, and long live the scream queens.