It's funny how a remake can sometimes completely replace an original classic. Nobody seems to talk about the 1998 version of Resident Evil 2. The Ring turned out to be a huge hit, but did you know it's an adaptation of a Japanese film? And of course there's The Fly; David Cronenberg's 1980s version is much, much more well known. But we're not here to talk about Cronenberg. We're here to talk about Kurt Neumann, the legendary German filmmaker and his 1958 sci-fi classic The Fly, one of his last films before passing away at the relatively young age of 50.
It's a classic premise: science, the force of progress, is beset by error, or hubris, or even just an act of God, resulting in something horrible that forces us to ask, "what hath science wrought?" And truly, what film better exemplifies such a question? We open with the discovery of a dead man, his arm and head squished to almost nothingness beneath a hydraulic press. His wife confesses to the deed, but insists that it was by her husband's request. A fixation on flies drives her to near-hysteria, but finally she tells the full story to her husband's business partner (played by none other than Vincent Price) and the police detective assigned to the case: her husband was an inventor, extremely wealthy and absurdly bright, having developed, entirely by himself, a working teleportation device. The usage is simple: stick whatever you want teleported into chamber A, throw some switches, the atoms of the thing to be transported are broken down and transmitted to chamber B, where they are put back together again. After some tweaking (and a disappeared cat) he gets it working properly. It's an almost miraculous device, with all sorts of practical applications, and no pesky detours through hell or alternate dimensions needed to make it work.
...until one night, our scientist fails to notice a fly had wandered into the teleportation chamber. Their atoms mixed, don't ask how, and now his head and arm are that of a fly's, and, gradually, so is his mind becoming as well. He sends his wife and clueless son on a mad quest to track down an odd-looking fly, but it repeatedly escapes, eventually disappearing outside with seemingly no hope of finding it again. Faced with no choice, he destroys his lab and has his wife crush him under the hydraulic press, in hopes of someone never building such a device again. Bit drastic if you ask me, but sure, okay.
The Fly, as Neumann presents it, is more of a drama than anything else. There's something almost eerie about it, even approaching the tone of cosmic horror. The scientist's explanations for how his machine works are vague; it's implied that even he doesn't fully understand. His ultimate fate — and that of the fly, also victim of the accident — evoke the nihilist sensibilities of Lovecraft's fiction, and that's not even getting into that fly story he ghost-wrote. (Content warning for racism... this is Lovecraft we're talking about.) The film slowly but steadily builds up to its ultimate reveal of the scientist's bulbous fly head; while it's not the most impressive special effects in and of itself, it is still extremely effective, complete with a vision of his wife screaming into compound eyes.
Going back to the 1958 version, you might be a little disappointed if you're more familiar with the 1986 version. Cronenberg leaned much more heavily into the body horror, including the infamous cat/babboon deleted scene that enraged test audiences. Neumann's version leans more on the suspense, being in truth a fairly typical 1950s suspense drama that just happens to revolve around a particularly outlandish accident of science. There's an honesty to that, and it's that honesty that gives the films of the era immediately preceding New Hollywood their charm.
All that being said, maybe it's not your thing. Maybe you prefer more modern films like the Cronenberg version. That's okay too. Everyone has their own tastes — don't let it bug you.
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