Film review: The Fly (1958)

Somebody on Twitter asked the other day "what was a film you saw at WAY too young an age?"  I couldn't actually think of one (I was a total wuss and would leave the room if a film was scary) but Jami remembered this question when looking for a schlocky monster movie to watch and saw The Fly listed.  I, on the other hand, had only ever seen the (excellent, super-gross) remake, so we decided to watch it.  The first thing to note is that it is entirely set in Montreal and everyone has French names.  Not something I've ever heard anyone remark about it, but it seems noteworthy.  The second thing is that it has an excellent (and surprisingly graphic) beginning, where a factory security guard hears something happening in the steel press room late at night and happens upon a smartly-dressed woman bending over the massive steel press.  She is startled and runs off. He approaches it and we and he see that a man's legs are sticking out from it and (gloriously technicolor) blood has oozed out in gallons.  Cut to... Vincent Price, sitting in his well-furnished office, and his fancy phone rings.  He smiles when he hears who it is - his sister-in-law, for whom he has a bit of a thing.  But she's ringing to tell him that she's killed his brother.  He thinks it's a joke at first, but finally works out that she's not kidding.  Then he gets a call from the security guard, who works for him (and the murdered man) as the factory is the joint property of the brothers.  So: good start!  We have a mystery - why would a wife, who by all accounts loved her husband very much, kill him in such a gruesome way?  (And apparently the press was operated twice, both with the bed set to zero, so it would crush him to a pancake.)  Surprisingly (especially for those of us who think we know the plot without having seen the film) we stay with this plotline for a good while.  The wife, Helene Delambre (well played by Patricia Owens - just as well, because she is, again surprisingly, the focus of the film) is bizarrely calm, and even seems not to recognize that her young son Phillippe (whom Vincent Price takes care of) is her son.  She also seems obsessed with flies - shocking the nurse who is looking after her by throwing herself at her when she swats one.  Finally, though, Vincent Price tricks her into spilling her guts (he tricks her by claiming that he has caught the fly that she's been looking for: with "a white head and one white leg") and will destroy it (makes you wonder why she was upset when the nurse swatted the earlier fly).  We then get the flashback that is the main body of the film, and that is the familiar plot of matter transmitter gone wrong.  Again, though, the action is very underplayed and you never actually see the accident.  In fact, there's no intimation that the scientist (played by David Hedison, one of the earlier Felix Leiters) is even going to attempt it (especially after he's failed with the family cat earlier - one blemish on the otherwise realistic sci-fi surface of the film because when the cat is vaporized we hear a spectral howling as if it has just become invisible or is in the astral plane or something).  Our first clue that something is amiss is because Vincent Price has come over for lunch and he and Helene go down to the lab to get his brother and there is a handwritten note on the door telling them not to enter, and Price notes that his handwriting has got worse.  There then follows a couple of days of Helene frantically trying to find the missing fly in the hope that if her husband and the fly go back through the transporter they'll magically untangle.  But they fail to find it, and when she persuades him to try going through by himself we finally get the moment when he takes the cloth that's been hiding his head off and we see the famous shot of first his fly's head, and then her screaming face seen through his composite eyes.  It is his decision to kill himself with the press because he can feel the fly side taking over, and as it is, he almost drags her with him.  Then we get back to the present and the inspector reveals to Vincent Price after they leave the room where Helene has revealed all this that he doesn't believe a word and he's going to have her carted off to the nut house ("guilty but insane").  And of course, just as she's about to be taken away, the fly is found, trapped in a spider's web, squeaking "help me!"  And it is the inspector who crushes it in horror, and then he and Vincent Price work out what story will get Helene off.  Cue happy ending!  So... is it good?  Well, it's well-written, and surprisingly classy, but it could also be staged as a play very easily, and it's more Agatha Christie than Ray Harryhausen.  I have a feeling the kids would be getting restive.  However, it's the tiny human-headed fly screaming "help me!" as the giant spider starts munching on it that scarred Jami for life, and who knows, maybe it would still have that effect on the more impressionable nipper.