The Big Picture

• David Cronenberg's The Fly is one of the greatest horror remakes because it goes beyond body horror — Cronenberg is able to make scientist Seth Brundle empathetic, which is rare for a creature feature.
• A deleted scene sees Brundle merge a monkey and a cat, then beating it to death afterward. Test audiences reacted negatively to the scene, and it was cut from the final film.
• The Fly revolutionized makeup effects in the horror genre, with the film taking home the Academy Award for Best Makeup.

While filmmakers often benefit from revisiting older material and interpreting it in a different way, remakes are notoriously difficult within the horror genre. A great horror remake must both honor the original film’s signature imagery whilst adapting it for modern audiences; this is particularly challenging when the original work has already become well known in popular culture. While there are certainly a lot of terrible horror remakes, including many from Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company, writer/director David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly managed to improve upon its predecessor in nearly every way.

The original 1958 film The Fly was a fun, albeit schlocky, creature feature that utilized the concept of a fly-like creature as a means of evoking terror. However, Cronenberg modeled his new version into a haunting tragedy about the dangers of meddling with the order of nature. Between the film’s game-changing makeup work and the emotional performances, The Fly is both deeply heartbreaking and utterly terrifying. Although it contains some of the greatest jump scares in the history of the horror genre, one of The Fly’s most haunting scenes was cut for being too brutal.

'The Fly' Generates Empathy for Seth Brundle

The Fly centers on the brilliant scientist Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum in one of his greatest performances. Unlike the erratic version of the character from the 1958 film, Goldblum’s version of Brundle is a realistic character that the audience can relate to. Despite his idiosyncrasies, Brundle appears to be a relatively normal man who just so happens to be gifted with extraordinary knowledge and a curiosity about synthetic biology. The early scenes between Brundle and the scientific journalist Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis) seek to humanize him. As they pool their collective knowledge and discuss the parameters of an experiment, Brundle and Ronnie begin to fall in love.

While these scenes serve an expositional role in establishing the research at Bartok Science Industries, the time dedicated to showing Brundle’s life before his accident makes the film’s horror elements more terrifying. After discovering that his teleportation device can synthesize two different forms or organic substances, Brundle believes that he may have unlocked a secret that could radically change medicine, science, and the human experience all-together. Unfortunately, the experiment goes disastrously awry when Brundle attempts to teleport himself; his DNA is merged with that of a housefly, and over the course of the film he steadily turns into a viscous insectoid creature.

Since the viewer has already become aware of Brundle’s sincere intentions, The Fly is the rare monster movie where the audience can empathize with the creature. Brundle’s transformation isn’t a result of his malevolence or ego, but rather an ambitious endeavor that went awry. While the 1958 original film is still entertaining today, it does not reach the level of human tragedy that Cronenberg’s version does. A large part of this is due to Goldblum, whose performance as Brundle was met with serious acclaim.

'The Fly's Deleted Scene Was Too Gruesome

While he was not the first choice to direct The Fly, Cronenberg’s approach to the film was instrumental to its success. Cronenberg leaned away from the more sensationalized aspects of monster movies at the time and applied his style of body horror to make the film even more gruesome. A deleted scene involved a desensitized Brundle attempting to merge the DNA of a cat and monkey together. When the unsightly hybrid monster unveils itself, Brundle mercilessly beats it to death. This suggests that Brundle no longer has any control over his inhibitions; the logic that had defined his persona before is now lost, as he has slowly begun to emulate the aggressive tendencies of a fly.

The deleted scene certainly made for an unnerving six-minute sequence that heightened the tension in the film. However, Cronenberg realized that having Brundle kill the hybrid creature would make the audience reflect on him poorly as a character. As disgusting as Brundle’s outward appearance appears to be, the audience still needs to remember that deep down he is the same charming scientist that they met during the initial act of the story. Showing Brundle in a more villainous light would make it significantly harder for the viewers to empathize with him once the film reaches its tragic climax.

According to The Fly’s producer, Stuart Cornfield, the monkey-cat scene was removed from the final cut of the film after test audiences reacted poorly. Test audiences may not always be trusted to make the best judgments on potentially upsetting content, but in the case of The Fly, their opinions aligned with Cronenberg’s. The decision ended up being beneficial to the film’s success, as The Fly was subsequently hailed as one of the greatest horror films of the 1980s.

'The Fly' Revolutionized Makeup Effects

While many of Cronenberg’s films feature elaborate sequences of body horror, The Fly changed the industry thanks to its complex makeup effects. The makeup design team had the difficult task of applying horrific prosthetic features to Goldblum’s body, but made him identifiable until the very end. Brundle’s evolution does not occur overnight; he has to slowly begin losing his humanity as his body depletes. Artists Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis received an Academy Award for Best Makeup for their work on the film.

Although he has no shortage of classics, The Fly is remembered as one of Cronenberg’s greatest films. He was able to take a premise that would have been easy to mock, and treat it as a grounded character drama with a realistic depiction of science. Even without the horrific cat-monkey scenes, The Fly is a deeply upsetting film that shows just how much deeper horror film remakes can get with a filmmaker of Cronenberg’s talent behind them.

The Fly is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

Rent on Prime Video