The Fly

Director: David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg

1986 / 96min / DCP

Working from the basic premise of a 1958 Vincent Price sci-fi/horror vehicle that might easily have been dismissed as drive-in camp, Cronenberg produced a genuine tragedy rooted in the horror of watching a body in the process of decay. Jeff Goldblum’s scientist, on the brink of a breakthrough with the telepods he’s designing, invites journalist Geena Davis to watch and document his revolutionary experiments—but when he accidentally splices his genes with those of a housefly during one of his demonstrations of the new technology, she finds herself witness instead to a terrible spectacle of transformation, achieved through practical effects by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”