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Over the Easter weekend, I saw for the first time in many years a TV rerun of the 1958 thriller, The Fly, starring a very young Vincent Price, David Hedison, and Herbert Marshall. I had remembered it for years as a sort of shoddy monster movie made on the cheap and so was surprised to see its colors were sharp, the acting was quite good, and the story much better than I remembered. It also reminded me of two elements of that film that has always puzzled me. The original movie is placed in Montreal and may even have been shot on location, with Price, Hedison, and Marshall all playing French Canadians. I don't think Canada back then offered all the enticements to movie makers that are available today, and even if it did, why were they cast as French Canadians rather than British Canadians (I think Herbert Marshall actually was English)?
It wasn't as dark and dismal as the later remake, and the suspense was created by the drone of a fly flitting in and out of open windows rather than the slow and messy transmutation of a man into a giant fly as happened in the remake. The remake certainly was more monster-like but less realistic to my way of thinking. In the original film, Hedison's effort to transmit matter as energy results in the instant connection of a fly's head and leg to his human torso and of his head and arm to the fly. Seems to me the changes would have to be instantaneous just like the flaws in the plate he first transmits. The slower transmutation of the man into a fly may satisfy modern prefererences for uckky make-up but just doesn't seem as "real" to me.
It wasn't as dark and dismal as the later remake, and the suspense was created by the drone of a fly flitting in and out of open windows rather than the slow and messy transmutation of a man into a giant fly as happened in the remake. The remake certainly was more monster-like but less realistic to my way of thinking. In the original film, Hedison's effort to transmit matter as energy results in the instant connection of a fly's head and leg to his human torso and of his head and arm to the fly. Seems to me the changes would have to be instantaneous just like the flaws in the plate he first transmits. The slower transmutation of the man into a fly may satisfy modern prefererences for uckky make-up but just doesn't seem as "real" to me.