The Fly 1958 ending explained

In the gripping 1958 science fiction film The Fly, I wonder if any have contemplated the grotesque shock ending.

The horror will drive you insane.

Al Hedison stars as a scientist working on a transporter. Using himself as a subject, he accidentally mixes his atoms with a fly's; in the end, he is screaming "help me!" in a spider's web as a large brown spider descends on him.

How frightening to find yourself in the body of a fly! An accomplished scientist with advanced degrees in math, physics, chemistry, and science, flying from leaf to leaf with ease.

With no way to unite with his wife because even if she held him in hand, it would be as a beautiful woman beholding a black, winged, insect, seen thousands of times and brushed away.

A human being looking out from the body of a fly!

Can you imagine the humility it would take to accept life as a fly and stay the course, flying around, eating what flies eat, estranged from man.

Trapped in a web, now strong as ropes, dying in a way no human has died before.

And what an imaginiative religious allegory about the incarnation of God into man, trapped on the tree. Those passing by mock and scold you, getting what you deserve, not knowing what you are.

 

I'll have what you're smoking.

 

You really needed to explain that? What part of "Helllp meeeeeee!' would you think we wouldn't get?

 

What a fabulous chilling ending it is.
The little fly had the doctor's head and his brain (which is why he was calling for help).
The thing is: the doctor ended up with a fly's head but he still had his own brain in there.
We have to assume that the machine created a duplication of the brain during the transportation experiment.

 

Yes, that interesting conundrum can be solved. The scientist with the fly's head was gradually reverting to fly; the fly therefore was gradually awakening into man!

Increasing the shock and horror. As the fly became human, it suffered as a fly.

 

It's enough to make you want to change your name to David.

 

Somebody had been reading his Kafka.

 

l have dreams like that...

 

And retitle the movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Food Chain.​

 

‘When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect.”

 

As far as the ending goes, Vincent Price said it took about 20 takes for him and Herbert Marshall to film it because it struck them as absurd.

Albert David Hedison started using his first name until he did a tv series for NBC in 1959. For some reason they didn’t like Al but agreed to his middle name.

 

Never seen the movie but I've read the short story, about a half-century ago. Not easily forgotten ...

 

There's a rare , seldom seen alternate ending where the scientist's wife kills the fly with a fly-swatted.

 

Yeah, I figured this out when I was 10 and saw the movie on TV in the early 1960s. The film is a little more vague on how long it took for the changes to take: he's initially human, then gradually starts changing to a fly. So you wonder what wound up in the web and when it got there, and how that teeny-tiny brain could still make its mouth speak...



The 1986 remake with Jeff Goldblum explains it in more detail and actually shows the horrific changes over time. That's a rough watch.

 

Pass da joint!!

 

The ending explained: Upset at the loss of his friend, Vincent Price hits his stash too hard and then has an hallucination of a fly with his buddy’s head. Distraught by the vision, he goes insane and changes his name to Phibes.

 

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

 

Actually it took Vincent two years to track down his drug dealer,who sold him that bad stash by which time ol Vince moved back to his family castle where he invited the dealer whose name was-Batholome to visit his-Pit And The Pendulum and the dealer was Never More.

 

After which, he changed his name to Egghead.

 

One of the few examples (the Thing being another),that takes a radically different a[proactive to the material and makes a film that is as (if not more) powerful than the original by putting it in a contemporary context. The 1958 film focused on the fear of unleashing new post-at oic power on the world, while the Cronenberg film uses the film as an apt metaphor for disease (a Cronenberg favorite) and AIDS. I doubt another remake or revisit of,the material could improve on it. I did like the sequel,as,it examined the same themes from a different view using the fear of adolescent maturity as part of its approach but it can’t to8ch Cronenberg’ s film. I always found it curious that Return of the Fly takes place when The son is in his 20’s yet in the first film he is, what, 10? Once again movie time/logic strikes.

 

I do love the story about how Herbert Marshall and Price could look at each other during the shooting of their final scene together as they ke-t busting out laughing at how absurd the sequence was to them. .

 

The movie pretty much ends when both the spider and The Fly get smooshed by a rock, but later on François explains: "He was searching for the truth. He almost found a great truth but for one instant, he was careless. The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world and the most dangerous." Maybe not the best explanation, but it makes sense when you're 12!!

 

Speaking of David, the Cronenberg version is 93x better.

 

Egggg-zactly!