THE FLY
1958
MOVIE REVIEW

My Books and Movies!

E.C. McMullen Jr.
RUMOR

RUMOR: People are dying to know the truth

PERPETUAL
BULLET

"'Some People' ... may be the standout story in the book."
- John Grant, Infinityplus

E.C. McMullen Jr.
WILLOW BLUE

"'Willow Blue' will burrow under your skin and stay there long after you've put the book down."
- Jeffrey Reddick, Creator of
FINAL DESTINATION

IN OTHER BOOKS
E.C. McMullen Jr.'s
short story
CEDO LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE
in the anthology
FEAR THE REAPER

"This Ray Bradbury-esque is one of the most memorable and one of the more original stories I've read in a long time."
- Steve Isaak,
Goodreads

HORROR 201:
The Silver Scream

Filmmaker's Guidebook
featuring
RAY BRADBURY,
JOHN CARPENTER,
WES CRAVEN,
TOM HOLLAND,
E.C. McMULLEN Jr.,
GEORGE A. ROMERO,
and many more.

Extensively quoted in

PHANTASM
EXHUMED
The Unauthorized Companion

SATAN'S 3-RING
CIRCUS OF HELL

Forward by
GAHAN WILSON &
FEO AMANTE.
With Comic Art by
ALEX PARDEE,
WILLIAM STOUT,
STEVE BISSETTE,
FRANK DIETZ,
JIM SMITH,
FRANK FORTE,
ERIC PIGORS,
MIKE SOSNOWSKI,
OMAHA PEREZ,
DAVID HARTMAN,
STEVEN MANNION,
JACOB HAIR,
and more!

And In
CINEMA
E.C. McMullen Jr.
Head Production Designer

MINE GAMES
(Starring:
JOSEPH CROSS,
BRIANA EVIGAN,
ALEX MERAZ,
ETHAN PECK)

Dept. head
Special Effects Make-Up
(SFX MUA)

A SIERRA NEVADA
GUNFIGHT
(MICHAEL MADSEN & JOHN SAVAGE).

Production Designer

UNIVERSAL DEAD
(DOUG JONES,
D.B. SWEENEY,
GARY GRAHAM)

Art Director

THE CRUSADER
(COLIN CUNNINGHAM,
GARY GRAHAM)

Review by
Kelly Parks

THE FLY
SEQUELS, PREQUELS, AND REMAKES

THE FLY
SCIENCE MOMENTS

THE FLY

- 1958
USA NYC Premiere: July 16, 1958
USA Release: AUG! 29, 1958
20th Century Fox
Rated: No rating

"Help me . . . Help me . . . "

The scene is more famous than the movie.

THE FLY, Directed by Kurt Neumann and written by George Langelann (RETURN OF THE FLY, THE FLY [1986], THE FLY II) and James Clavell (THE SATAN BUG), has an excellent opening. A watchman is just arriving at a factory when he hears machinery being operated. He follows the noise and sees a woman standing near a large industrial press. The machine is clearly the source of the noise and when the woman sees the watchman she runs. Upon closer investigation the watchman makes a grisly discovery: the corpse of a man whose head and left arm have been crushed by the press.

Cut to Francois Delambre (Vincent Price: THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) receiving a phone call from his sister-in-law. She calmly informs him that she has killed his brother André. Francois doesn't believe her but promises to come right over. Before he can leave he receives a second call, this time from the night watchman at what turns out to be a factory owned by the Delambre family. The watchman tells him about the corpse and the woman, who he recognized as Mrs. Delambre, André's wife.

Francois calls police inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall: GOG) - the story takes place in France - and everyone meets down at the factory. Francois confirms that the corpse with the crushed head is his brother André by identifying a scar on the corpse's leg.

Charas and Francois go to André's house and find his wife Helene (Patricia Owens: THE DESTRUCTORS, GHOST SHIP) relaxed and happy and perfectly willing to admit that she killed her husband but unwilling to say why. Francois seems more upset that Helene is in trouble than that his brother is dead which leads Charas to at first suspect a love triangle.

The Fly 1959 Hints of something more unusual come in the form of Helene's obsession with examining every fly she notices, and a story from Phillipe (Charles Herbert: THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK, 13 GHOSTS), André and Helene's young son, about a frantic search for a "fly with a white head". Eventually Helene breaks down and tells the story.

We flash back to the week before and find that André (David Albert Hedison: LIVE AND LET DIE) is a successful inventor. He shows his wife his latest invention: a working teleporter. This device is able to disintegrate matter, beam it to a receiver, and reintegrate it back into solid matter again. It functions well on inanimate material but living things don't seem to make the trip. Of course, once he thinks the bugs (ha!) are worked out, the brave scientist must try it himself.

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
The idea of teleportation has been a favorite of sci-fi forever, right up there with warp drive, but the details have always been glossed over and this is no exception.

I'm sure you’ve heard of "E = mc2" ? This famous Einstein equation tells you how much energy you get when you convert matter into energy. "E" is energy, "m" is mass and "c" is the speed of light.

If we use metric units, a full grown man masses about 85 kilograms. The speed of light is pretty close to 300,000 kilometers / second or 3 X 108 meters / second so plugging these numbers in gives us an energy of 7.65 x 1018 kg-m2/sec2 or 7.65 x 1018 Joules. In case that means nothing to you, it's equivalent to 1800 megatons of TNT (about 90 good, old-fashioned H-bombs). Not exactly the kind of experiment you want your husband doing in the basement.

The well known resolution that comes when the experiment goes horribly wrong is fascinating but raises a lot of questions. If he trades heads with a fly, wouldn't that means he trades brains? Why would he still be himself at all?

Regardless, that portion of the movie is well played if a bit of a let down from the good, mysterious build up from the first half. If you're a fan of horror and sci-fi then THE FLY is a must-see movie, but it's not going to knock your socks off or anything. I give it three shriek girls.