"The Fly" (1957)

This story by the French-born British writer George Langelaan feels like a classic to me now for a few reasons. Published originally in Playboy, a solid source of horror in the '50s and '60s under Ray Russell's editorial hand, "The Fly" made it into an Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthology a few years later, where I read it as a kid. It was actually anthologized a lot in the '60s, as science fiction as well as horror. It has a fly theme, obviously, with which I had mild preoccupations then (see also Jane Rice's "Idol of the Flies"). It was quickly adapted for a 1958 movie, and I remember even staying up late to see it on TV. In the '80s, director and cowriter David Cronenberg adapted it for one of his best movies. I recently made a Fly day of it—read the long story and looked at the two adaptations. The 1958 movie is quite faithful to Langelaan's story, which is decidedly clunky and slow, but carried by its great idea: a scientist has basically invented teleportation and then a terrible mistake happens. Andre Delambre is a reckless cowboy of a scientist. For example, he's so excited about a successful teleportation of an inanimate object that he throws the family cat in to see how it goes with life and blows it to nothingness. He's sincere, he means well, but he is impatient and remarkably heedless. Having finally worked the bugs out of teleporting living beings, he climbs in to teleport himself. But alas there is a fly in the chamber with him.

In the story and the first movie, the switcheroos happen on a macro level and are relatively more antiseptic. There's one intriguing detail nothing is made of, but it always sticks with me: the printing on the first inanimate object he successfully teleports comes through backwards, suggesting levels of mirrors and reflection. But the rest is horrifying and/or gross enough. Andre's head and right arm end up on the fly, tiny size ("Help me!" this strange "white-headed" fly calls in munchkin voice), while the head and one tentacle-leg of the fly end up human-size on Andre. He drapes a towel over his head and communicates with his fashionable '50s wife Helene by typing out messages. I was surprised to see it's a color movie (my TV the first time was black and white) and then a little jarred by the motley cast, which includes Vincent Price, doing his usual thing, and David Hedison as Andre. I only know Hedison as a star of the TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (rendered as "Voyage to See What's on the Bottom" by Mad magazine ... not sure why that has stuck with me). Hedison was later a ubiquitous hey-that-guy on TV shows like Cannon and Love, American Style. Patricia Owens as Helene plays it more or less like a screaming sexpot, and their kid Philippe (Henri in the story) is an unbearably normal Leave It to Beaver specimen. How Vincent Price got mixed up with all this is anyone's guess.

David Cronenberg rechristened all the characters and moved them to the big city, but his real innovation was taking the teleporter mix-up down to the genetic molecular level. The computer was confused during the reintegration process, we learn. This version of The Fly is focused more deliberately on the slow-motion transformation. The result is something far better than Langelaan's story, though plainly indebted to it. It doesn't hurt that the cast includes Jeff Goldblum as the reckless scientist Seth Brundle and Geena Davis as his casual love interest Ronnie. Goldblum is nearly pure sparkling charisma, eccentric as always but putting it over especially well here, and Davis keeps up with him. We see tendencies of flies start to overtake him, such as an inordinate taste for sugar. Eventually it proceeds to more fly-like modes of digestion, at which point we're reminded how much body horror is a staple of Cronenberg's work. Of all three versions, this Fly is best at working the horrific tragedy Langelaan intended. To unlock the secret of teleportation, and then to become vermin. Has anyone ever conceived a greater fall?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night, ed. Robert Arthur (out of print)
Read story online.