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Rating: The Fly, this is the questionable Italian title, is actually The Fly based on a story (La Mouche, 1957) by George Langelaan.
It is a 1958 film directed by Kurt Neumann, remembered for directing the "Tarzan" TV series with Johnny Weissmuller between 1945 and 1954.
Neumann later specialized in the science fiction genre and achieved great box office success with this film but died prematurely on the premiere day.
I believe you all know the story and therefore the experiment perhaps because 30 years later David Cronenberg made a remake of this film.
It must be said that these two films have only the experiment in common.
The film is fascinating and futuristic for its time. To think of being able to teleport matter by separating and recomposing atoms in space is a concept that is still futuristic today, if not unachievable, but 50 years ago, the doctor tells his wife, nobody would have ever imagined they could watch a baseball game in New York that is taking place in Chicago…
The doctor is more determined than ever and proceeds incessantly in his studies to perfect his invention, but an annoying setback, as only a fly can be annoying, will precipitate the events.
The film is in flashback, the doctor is already dead, crushed by a press operated by the wife who is therefore accused of murder. For her, it will be the death penalty or mental illness… how can one believe her incredible story-confession about why she pushed the press button to crush her husband whom she loved so much?
This film is certainly worth seeing both for the originality of the theme dealt with, in short, it's not really the usual science fiction film with evil extraterrestrials, and for the execution.
You should see the doctor's laboratory, the fantastic sequences of teleportation between blinding lights and deafening noises in the best tradition of the genre films of that era.
Memorable also is the make-up of the fly-man who, after the incident, deliberately remains secluded in his underground laboratory with his head covered by a black cloth…
There is also Vincent Price, the doctor's brother. I wondered why Price had this role and didn’t play Dr. André Delambre himself? Well, perhaps because André and his wife are very young in the film and Price was already 47 at the time… but I asked myself the question anyway because the weak link in the chain is precisely the doctor. In my opinion, he didn’t have the physique du rôle, too handsome to be a mad scientist…
The following year The Return of The Fly was released once again with Vincent Price and with the doctor's son intent on resuming his father's studies…
The Fly was selected as one of "The Sci-Fi 100" in Entertainment Weekly, one of the greatest science fiction films.
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