Bugged by THE FLY in '50s Horror and Sci-Fi Forum

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Bugged by THE FLY

Author	Comment
capmonte	Bugged by THE FLY	Lead	[-]
Oct 2 05 2:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	THE FLY was one of the seminal films from my childhood...it was my first sci-fi/horror movie (seen on WOR 9 at the tender age of 5), my first Vincent Price movie, the first movie that sent me running to my mother in tears (the "help me"-shrieking fly and then Herbert Marshall squashing both it and the spider hurled me over the edge) and still kinda makes me quivery...so I decided to give it a whirl today for the first time in ages. Here's what I don't get...why does the fly-with- Hedison's-head leave the lab in the first place? We're to assume the fly must have some degree of Hedison's brain matter working, right (otherwise, why would it be able to speak and say things like "help me!" and "go away!")? Shouldn't the fly have just stuck around in case Hedison-with-fly's-head wanted to try the experiment again, instead of making Patricia Owen and son and poor frazzled housekeeper Kathleen Freeman tear apart the study and toss sugar about? I'd think he'd want to stick around where his wife, son, and brother were anyway...unless fly-with-hedison's-head was so horrified by itself it would rather buzz off than face his family.
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TomWeaver999	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#1	[-]
Oct 2 05 2:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've wondered about that too (it's nice to have this amount of time on one's hands!) and come to the conclusion that the two-legged man-fly was much more fly than man (could still type, write on the blackboard, run the equipment, etc.) so the winged fly-man was much more fly than man (not much brain power, just instinctively doin' what flies DO).
stevenmarkand	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#2	[-]
Oct 2 05 4:35 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I just love it when people try to apply rationality and logic to a fifties sci-fi movie like THE FLY! Pointing out inconsistencies of logic in movies of this sort is nearly as difficult as finding flaws in our current policy in the Middle East.
capmonte	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#3	[-]
Oct 2 05 5:52 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* I just love it when people try to apply rationality and logic to a fifties sci-fi movie like THE FLY! It's all part of the fun! I also realize that it's ludicrous to imagine just the heads/arm/leg would swap (and on that same reckoning, how come the Hedison body didn't end up with a teeny tiny fly head and the fly end up with a humongous Hedison head), but it's fun to talk about!
Bill Warren	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#4	[-]
Oct 2 05 9:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It never occurred to me, not even when I first read the story and saw the movie (I guess I was 14 when I read the story, 15 when I saw the movie) that the two had traded heads as if they were cut off the original bodies and grafted onto the new ones. I assumed that atomic patterns were traded instead, which also applied to the brains. We saw that the fly-headed Andre was becoming increasingly fly-like in his thinking; I assumed the Andre-headed fly started out thinking like a fly and gradually became more Andre-like. I thought more about this matter-transmitter idea, and wondered--could these impulses be recorded and played back? Several times? Would there be some kind of information degradation inherent in the recording? Could you edit this information? Splice it?
Doctor 1313	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#5	[-]
Oct 3 05 9:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've always felt the same as Tom, that the fly-scientist retained his human intellect until the fly started taking over toward the end. The scientist-fly, however, retained his fly intellect until the end. Unfortunately, by then, it had done a stupid fly-thing like get caught in a web, and that's when the scientist was able to assert control...although too late. DOCTOR 13
DonM435	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#6	[-]
Oct 3 05 10:11 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Okay, I think that both of the fly-monsters had fly faces on mostly human heads. It seems that fly-Philippe (the insect-sized creature) retained more of his human brainpower than did fly-Andre. The former called people by name in that creepy voice (VERY short "vocal cords"), whereas his old man, er, bug, was limited to the parrot-like "Help me!" Supporting this theory is the fact that the Phillipe-monster is less human than the Andre-monster, homicidal and less rational. Now, as to why the fly personality increased in the Andre-monster and receded in the Phillipe-monster, this does seem more fantastic, but could propbably be explained away by very dense psychology. I'd try, but it would assure a headache. We are told that fly-Andre has a white-sort-of leg (and does show a human arm in the spider web shots), but the ludicrous close-ups of fly-Phillipe show six pipe-cleaner fly legs, so the teleport books don't balance. As to how the fly atoms got blown up by a factor of several million and the human atoms shrunk in similar fashion . . . I can't say. There all sorts of physical and biological problems to be worked out here. I covered all of this in an article ("Fly Specs") in CULT MOVIES #35 years ago. That doesn't mean I understand it.
stevenmarkand	Re: Bugged by THE FLY	#7	[-]
Oct 8 05 6:19 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've always enjoyed Cronenberg's take on the original when Brundlefly urges his lover to "dive [with him] into the plasma pool". Puts a different spin on "Long Live the New Flesh"!
Bobtheman	Bugged by the Fly	#8	[-]
Aug 18 06 4:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I think a good theory- from another post- is that the physical exteriors of the arm and leg of the scientist and and the fly were instantly re-shaped/re-formed, and the interiors just took longer. That would explain why the man with fly head retained his normal brain and thinking until the interiors started changing to a flys. The fly with the human head still reacted like a fly and buzzed off, until much later his human intellect returned, as the scientist with fly head was losing his intellect. That's why the tiny creature made no effort to communicate and make no effort to initiate the disintegration-integration process. Only one of them could have the human thought processes at any one time. The close up of the fly leaving the box when Phillipe caught it and let it go doesn't show the human leg it had. In Return of the Fly, the tiny creature with Philippe's head doesn't show any human legs, although his normal size body with the fly head had a fly arm and leg, an error in the film.
Bobtheman	The Fly	#9	[-]
Aug 18 06 5:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In my above post, I should have worded it that the physical exteriors of the HEAD and ARM of the fly and the scientist were instantly transformed, not the arm and leg.
IzzyVanHalen	Re: The Fly	#10	[-]
Aug 18 06 6:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You know, I brought up this EXACT point on these very boards several months ago...
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Unregistered(d)	Re: The Fly	#11	[-]
Aug 18 06 8:27 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It's been a while since I read the original story, but if I remember right, when Andre's head is revealed it is an amalgam of the fly and Dandelo, the cat!
Monsterpal	Re: The Fly	#12	[-]
Aug 18 06 8:30 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	That's right. It's an even weirder creatur---human, cat, and fly---in Georges Langelaan's original story, which I believe was published in PLAYBOY in 1957.
TomWeaver999	Re: The Fly	#13	[-]
Aug 18 06 8:52 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	If anybody's got the CD of the FLY music, I wrote (possibly TOO-long!) liner notes and I get into the man-fly-cat thing -- and even quote some memos that Fox production head Buddy Adler wrote, suggesting some kinda silly (IMHO) stuff to make the movie more horrifying.
Renfield	Re: The Fly	#14	[-]
Aug 19 06 12:42 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I recall reading the Playboy short story--Monsterpal's right. The Fly didn't make much sense to me, either, when I saw it as a widdle kid--I thought the fly head meant that the fly brain controlled Hedison's body, yet it didn't because of the notes, etc. But...it's such a cool monster flick that I just didn't care back then about the plot holes and I still don't. Joe "Renfield" Meadows HORROR-WOOD Webzine http://www.horror-wood.com
Professor X	Re: The Fly	#15	[-]
Aug 19 06 3:56 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Anyone have any idea when THE FLY and RETURN OF THE FLY might be re-released on DVD?
Bobtheman	You Bugged Me	#16	[-]
Aug 19 06 8:43 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Don't know when Fly and Return of Fly going to be re-releaed on DVD. AMC had an excellent documentary a few years ago called "The Fly Papers" on all The Fly movies. Anyone have information on a new 2006 Fly Movie supposedly in production? Goofs in Return of Fly: Francois and Phillipe go from inside factory directly into Andre's lab. But the lab was the downstairs of Andre's house, Andre and Helene had to walk outdoors from his house to the factory where the press was in the original movie. In Return of the Fly, Andre's handwriting on the blackboard can be seen, but in the original Fly, Helene told Charas she rubbed it out. Tiny fily with Phillipe's head has all fly legs, but Phillipe has arm and leg of fly. In chase scene, mask on Fly creature was slipping, and he had to use hands to keep it steady. If the tiny creature had Phillipe's intellect, the human with fly head had fly's intellect, why would it return to the house? When the policeman and rat went through disintegrator-integrator, why weren't their heads exchanged? In rebuilding the machine, why didn't Phillipe make it so it would malfunction or not work if two patterns were inside it, or fix it (?) so what happened to Andre and fly couldn't happen again?
HalLane	Re: You Bugged Me	#17	[-]
Aug 19 06 9:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Plus Philippe ages decades between pictures, while Vinnie remains ageless.
TomWeaver999	Re: You Bugged Me	#18	[-]
Aug 19 06 10:07 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Plus David Frankham (as the bad guy) turns Philippe into the Fly and flees to his hideout (the mortuary), but much later the Fly somehow knows where to go to find and kill him.
Bobtheman	You Bugged Me	#19	[-]
Aug 19 06 10:57 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Another goof: In Return of the Fly,Francois sought the help of Inspector Beechem, who he said "assisted Charas" and "was invaluable" and Beecham knows what happened to Andre; however, Inspector Beecham was not featured or mentioned in the original Fly. Plus, when Charas and Francois discover the fly with Andre's head in the garden with the spider and Charas kills them with the rock, they agree to make the report of the investigation read that it was a sucide otherwise people would think they were mad. If that's so, then why would Charas tell the real story to Inspector Beecham?
Monsterpal	Re: You Bugged Me	#20	[-]
Aug 19 06 11:20 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"The Fly" was re-published in a special PLAYBOY edition in the mid-sixties and has been in a few anthologies since then.
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