The Fly (1986) (Blu Ray) - 7/10

The last film of the day was the cult favorite The Fly on Blu Ray from director David Cronenberg. I can't remember the last time I saw this so after watching AHOV the other day, I figured I would revisit it to get a better feeling of the acclaimed filmmaker's style. It's interesting to see the genres blended into this movie and I was surprised that it wasn't really a paint by numbers horror or straight Sci-Fi movie but more of a character study that blends both. Jeff Golblum plays the mad scientist who basically creates a pod-like teleporation device that he start experimenting with and when Geena Davis shows up, love ensues while they start messing with it. It was funny to see the lame computers, set pieces and dated special fx in this film as the technology they show is relatively simple, yet never unbelievable. When Goldblum finally decides to test his device on himself, well, you guess it, a fly gets into the pods and fuses with his DNA to create this ugly-ass fly creature which we see him change into over the rest of the film. I appreciated the slow progression of his mutation and how this affects their relationship to where we see him try to deny what's occuring when small hairs start to appear, muscles are enhanced, and by the end a full on horror movie beast with a very well done costume that's like something straight out of John Carpeter's The Thing. What makes this movie so well received I think aren't the gruesome scenes and great make-up of the bizarre fly-hybrid monster that attacks everyone at the end but it's the journey he has with himself to deal with this power and the struggle to reverse it so he doesn't hurt the people around him. So many horror movies fall into the same old rut of giving us all these secondary characters who run around and get picked off one at a time by this hidden creature so it was refreshing to see just the main characters dealing with this abomination of science and the implications gene-splicing and teleporation truly can bring to light. Cronenberg is a pretty weird dude and this is just another nightmare he must have had that comments on what humans shouldn't do with tecnology.