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| An excitement-building, eerily creepy poster for Kurt Neumann's The Fly |
A brilliant scientist works to create a teleportation device in his basement laboratory, but when he starts to experiment, a terrible mistake takes place.
The Fly is a wholly incredible experience, an extraordinarily well-made sci-fi horror drama. Its first half is quite entertaining; its second half produces an anxiety-provoking fear that is extremely rarely provoked by films. The existential anxiety that grabbed me felt as if it completely consumed me on my first time of watching the film, and to me The Fly will always have something insanely eerie, mysteriously terrifying about it.
The Fly is written by Australian James Clavell (Savage Justice (1967)) (his first produced screenplay), based on the same-titled 1957 Playboy magazine short story by George Lagelaan (The Dolphin Speaks Too (1964)), and directed by great German filmmaker Kurt Neumann (The Big Cage (1933)). It marks the major horror genre entrance for Vincent Price (Diary of a Madman (1963)), who went on to become one of the genre's biggest stars of all time, and is shot in glorious colors by Karl Struss (It's a Small World (1950)).
Watch the great, Vincent Price-hosted trailer for the film here
Cost: 350k $ - 495k $ (different reports)
Box office: 3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[The Fly was released 16 July (USA) and runs 93 minutes. The film was to be distributed by Fox's B movie sub-company Regal Pictures, but Fox upgraded the film and took it for its own in the end, probably realizing its high quality. The laboratory set cost 28k $ to produce. Filming took place in Montreal, Canada and in Los Angeles, California for 18 days in March 1958. The film is reportedly loyal to Langelaan's story for the most part; it does change the setting from France to Canada and erases a suicide by the Hélène character in the end. In North America, the film was released on a double bill with Space Master X-7 by Edward Bernds. It earned 1.7 mil. $ in rentals and was one of Fox's biggest hits of the year and reportedly the 8th highest-grossing film of the year overall. Neumann passed away a few weeks after the premiere and did not live to realize that he had made his career's most successful film. Two sequels were made; Return of the Fly (1959), by Bernds, with Price, and Curse of the Fly (1965), without either of them. David Cronenberg made an acclaimed new version, The Fly (1986), which had one sequel, The Fly II (1989). Price returned in Have Gun - Will Travel (1958, TV-series) and theatrically in House on Haunted Hill (1959). Neumann had completed 3 more pictures that were released after The Fly: Machete (1958), Watusi (1959) and Counterplot (1959). The Fly is fresh at 95 % with a 7.1/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Fly?
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