jadavix "The Fly" is a really cool story which is sort of let down by fairly dull direction. It's never as horrifying as it should be, at least until the end.The plot concerns a scientist who is found crushed by his own machine in a set-piece which is surprisingly bloody for a '50s picture. His wife admits to some involvement, but swears she didn't murder him. In flashbacks, we see the man invent teleportation devices which he uses on inanimate objects and then on animals. We learn that a mishap, perhaps due to this hubristic intrusion into God's realm, has led to the creation of a half-man, half-fly.For much of "The Fly"'s run-time, I appreciated its story, but not the way it was told. Vincent Price, that actor of inimitable voice and bearing, does not, in fact, play the fly-man. His role in the movie is hard to account for. I understand that the audience might not have been expected to warm to the fly-man, but what about his wife? Could she not have been relied on to carry the movie, while at the same time providing a channel for pathos? I can't believe I'm having a hard time justifying Vincent Price's participation in a movie. It's not like his presence bothers you. It's just hard to explain.Anyway, I was all set to give "The Fly" a seven out of ten. That is the rating I give to good movies which fail to hold my attention throughout due to pacing issues, or poor direction. Then I saw the ending, and what an ending. That will prove hard to forget, and was genuinely horrifying. Hence I would give "The Fly" seven-point-five out of ten, if IMDb would let me.

filmbaker Now, when it comes to movies, anything that's hokey or flawed in the movie lets me give it an imperfect rating, whether it be 0 or 99. The Fly didn't have that kind of flaw. The acting was completely well done, the creature had an actual background, and there was enough mystery, suspense, and horror to make this romance movie well done. I suppose my favorite thing about the movie was the acting. None of them were bad in any way. Plus, the story had some truly and unforgettably iconic moments. The Fly is definitely a perfect movie. I believe it is best you watch this movie without knowing anything about it. Otherwise, you may have an idea of what's going on. If you know nothing, then you'll expect nothing. If you expect nothing, you will not be subject to any disappointment. The Fly, in my opinion, is a perfect movie. Not even some of the movie world's most memorable films rival this.

Rueiro Although it now looks inevitably outdated, this film is one of the best examples of the fantastic and sci-fi genre made in Hollywood in the second half of the 1950s - Them!, The Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, etc. Unlike the others, this one was shot in colour and also in Cinemascope, and it has two well- known names in the cast. Vincent Price, the most European of all American actors, had not established yet his status as an icon of the horror and fantastic genre –the Roger Corman films would help him to achieve that-, and Herbert Marshall, although never a leading star, he certainly was one of the most recognisable and solid supporting actors of the studio era. The Fly is about a scientific experiment going wrong. And when atomic energy is involved, one can be sure that the result is not only going to be disastrous but also gruesome. We have seen the tele-transportation process hundreds of times in Star Trek, and because of that we take it almost for granted even if we know it is sheer fantasy. But, who knows if it won't be a possibility in two or three hundred years from now? As André says to his wife Helene "If fifty years ago someone had explained to my father the concept of television, he would have laughed his head off" It is an interesting idea and by no means ridiculous. André succeeds tele-transporting a saucer and a newspaper, and all seems to be under control. Full of confidence, he then tries with the family cat, and it is there when things go awry. The poor animal disintegrates all right, but then it doesn't materialise again as expected. His atoms go lost forever in the limbo of infinity. Andre should take this as a warning and stop playing Dr Frankenstein, but he is too obsessed with his dream by now and won't give it up. The successful experiment with a guinea pig, a few days later, restores his confidence. We never see him trying the experiment on himself, which I think was a wise decision by the director because then it puts us in Helene's place when she first enters the laboratory after the mutation. We learn that André suffered an accident, he keeps his head covered with a cloth, he can't speak and he is desperate to find a particular fly. We can guess he has been disfigured, but then, what does a fly have to do with it? The film keeps us in suspense as the wife, the little boy and the foolish maid go around the house trying to catch the fly in question in what is an almost comical sequence: the wife is almost paranoid, the kid thinks it is just a game, and the maid thinks that her lady has lost one or two screws all of a sudden. The scene in which Helene snatches the cloth off André's head to see his face, revealing so his nightmarish mutation, is still quite shocking for today's standards, and the make-up is remarkably good with those balloon-like eyes and the fly's snout twitching all the time. Apparently, the actress didn't see the make-up until the very moment the scene was shot, and so her hysterical reaction was totally spontaneous and genuine. That was another clever idea of the director. And another interesting detail he offers us is the POV shot of the fly in multi- images, because that is believed to be how insects see the world. Their eyes are formed by hexagonal tubes that are supposed to give them a cell-like vision. The Fly is definitely a piece that couldn't be missed in my film collection.

thekesslerboy A highly entertaining sci-fi horror and, overall, a wee bit better than Cronenberg's 80's The Fly, which was also a fine film.For both film's, the horror is in the concept: the genes of a fly contaminate the genes of a human by accident when an inventor does a 'beam me up, Scotty' / Tomorrow People transportation (ask your crumblies if you're under 45). Any hope that this might be reversed - with or without the fly - seems forlorn, to them and us. But love can conquer this, right? Yes, but only to a point, the point being where hope ends and hopelessness begins.Vincent Price is a nice guy and, for me, does that far more believably than his usual Dr Nasty roles.This 50's sci-fi horror classic is, like many films of that era, engrossing, pacey and flawless.