Misunderstood Monsters: On Death, Disease, and THE FLY
By Matt Konopka
Previous ⬅ Misunderstood Monsters: Keep Your Hands Off JENNIFER’S BODY
Welcome fellow monster kids to Misunderstood Monsters. This is where I, Matt Konopka, sink my fangs into all sorts of beasts, ghouls, and creatures from above while I search for the humanity behind their frightening exteriors. From monster favorites such as The Wolf Man to obscure monsters like the whistling Shadmock, there is more to these fiends than bad hair days and gooey tentacles. Within them all is a piece of ourselves.
Some weeks ago, a childhood friend of mine passed away. Someone I’ve known for decades. Someone I snuck into movies with as a kid. Played video games with, from dusk till dawn. Took our dates to prom with. Someone who life or fate or God or whatever decided to take from us before he turned forty. Not by a tragic accident, but by a disease he had been cursed with his entire life: diabetes. His name was Bobby. And after a long year of fighting his body’s revolt against him while in and out of the hospital, we said our goodbyes on December 9th, 2024.
I loved Bobby. As did his friends, his family, his fiancé. But no matter how powerful our love for someone is, it can’t stop the betrayal of one’s own flesh. The pain of watching someone you care for waste away, that transformation of their healthy smile into something else, the fear you can’t help but notice every time you look in their eyes…it’s unbearable. Horrible. Terrifying. A terror that few films have ever captured quite as acutely as David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986).
Based on a short story by George Langelaan that first appeared in the June 1957 issue of Playboy Magazine, and later adapted for the screen by James Clavell for director Kurt Neumann’s 1958 The Fly starring Vincent Price, David Cronenberg was hired to helm a remake for 20th Century Fox. Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue had already written a draft, but one of Cronenberg’s stipulations was that he get to rewrite the script, changing much of what existed to fit his vision. That vision tells the story of a scientist named Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) who reveals to journalist, Veronica (Geena Davis), that he is working on a teleportation pod that will “change the world, and human life as we know it.” He invites Veronica to observe the process for an eventual book, and within no time, the two form a romance. But when Seth becomes jealous over ex-boyfriend/magazine editor Stathis (John Getz) lingering in Veronica’s life, he decides to test the pod on himself, accidentally fusing his genes with that of a fly and beginning a gradual transformation into something terrible…what he refers to as “Brundlefly.”
On paper, The Fly is a silly concept, the sort of B-movie creature feature that heavily populated cinemas in the 1950s. In other hands, that may very well be what the remake would’ve become. But David Cronenberg is one of a kind. Despite the many talented directors available at the time, it’s hard to imagine any filmmaker in the 1980s delivering the complex story of love and the horror of the flesh that Cronenberg had done. Like Brundle and Fly, the mix of the two made for an unforgettable nightmare, as frightening as it is heart-shattering.
Since the AIDS epidemic was ripping through the queer community back then, many critics saw The Fly as a representation of that devastating disease, but in Cronenberg’s mind, what happens to Seth was not merely a metaphor for AIDS, but for any disease that destroys the body. Cancer. Age. And in Bobby’s case, diabetes. Similar to the way a killer doesn’t have “murderer” stamped on their forehead, diseases such as these rarely announce themselves upon arrival. The knowledge that it has been there all along…that’s one of numerous ways it twists the knife. This becomes apparent on rewatches of The Fly, when, minutes in, Seth reveals he has motion sickness, an issue that has led to his development of the pods. We as the audience know his transformation does not begin until he teleports himself. But if you consider the intent of the film, this seems like Cronenberg is hinting to us as well as Veronica that Seth is not all right. Maybe it’s just motion sickness…or maybe it’s something else. Like the fly no larger than Seth’s thumb nail, disease starts small. A new mole could be just a mole…or something more sinister. Most of the time, we don’t know until things have progressed much further.
Perhaps one of the worst aspects of a life-threatening disease is in how it gives you hope before it brings you crashing back down to Earth. Just a couple weeks before Bobby passed, he had started to feel better. We believed he may make it. We had hope. When Seth first begins to change, the signs are there with the coarse hairs growing on his back, but he feels good. Better than ever, in fact. Excitement pours out of him like the heaps of sugar he pours into his coffee. Seth could have ended up in that pod with anything, but no creature is more perfect of a representation for disease than an insect. Both are cruel. Remorseless. You can’t reason with them. As Seth so painfully admits to Veronica during his iconic insect politics speech, “I’ll hurt you if you stay.” Not by choice, but by simply being. Because it does hurt to watch someone change so dramatically. There are no words to prepare any of us for how much it hurts. “Be afraid. Be very afraid,” Veronica remarks in yet another classic moment of dialogue. Be afraid not because of Seth, but because of the terror you’ll both feel in being unable to stop the change. It’s a fear I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
The Fly won the 1987 Oscar for Best Makeup, a well-deserved win for what are some of the most impressive (and gruesome) effects to appear in a Cronenberg film. Out of respect for Bobby, I’ll spare you the details of the way his flesh attacked him, but I will say that, since we lived in different states, I’d only see him every few months this last year or so, and each time presented a new shock of horror. Veronica experiences this as well, arriving at Seth’s place every few weeks to witness a man who looks less and less like the person she knew and more like something else. A fly that dreamed of being a man, and loved it, but now must wake from that dream. I think of Bobby, looking in the mirror the way Seth does and no longer recognizing himself. I wonder if he had his own cabinet of natural history. I ask what he ever did to deserve such a slow disintegration of the dream we all dream before waking to discover the fate that awaits us. Tears well in my eyes with the understanding that there is not, will never be, an answer.
Yet for as tragic as The Fly is in its representation of disease, and for as crushing as it has been to lose a friend at such a young age, I hold onto one glimmering positive from Cronenberg’s film. The videos Veronica takes of Seth before his transformation, the beautiful moments they share…these are memories the disease can never take from us. Permanent pieces of our own museum of natural history reflecting the life we shared with someone. A dream within a dream that we can visit whenever we wish and see the one we’ve lost for who they were again, not who they became. As hard as it tries, their disease does not define them.
I love you, Bobby. You’ll always be that smiling kid that I was lucky enough to dream this dream with. 🩸
About
Matt is a writer and wannabe werewolf who began his love of horror at the ripe old age of 3 with John Carpenter’s Christine. He has previously been published on Dread Central, Certified Forgotten, Daily Grindhouse and others. He has also contributed essays for releases from labels such as Arrow Video. He lives in Los Angeles, CA, with his wonderful wife and their fur baby, Storm.
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