Dir Chris Walas

 

 

In 1986 director David Cronenberg astonished audiences by delivering his horror film-as-love story/tragedy The Fly, a science fiction horror film about the gradual metamorphosis (and psychological disintegration) of scientist Seth Brundle, who is altered after his genes and those of a common housefly are accidentally merged during an experiment using telepods, an invention of his own design which breaks apart matter in one telepod booth and reassembles it across physical space in another. The film set a new standard for excellence in modern scare cinema and is regarded by many genre enthusiasts as one of the best horror films ever made, as well as one of the few remakes which handily outshines the film it is based on in every regard.

    Naturally, plans were put in motion to film a sequel to the breakout hit and 1989 saw the arrival of The Fly II, this time directed by F/X guru Chris Walas - whose makeup effects in the original film earned an Academy Award- and written by Frank Darabont, who would later direct such movies as Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist and the pilot episode of The Walking Dead.

     The sequel opens with Veronica Quaife (the love interest in the first film), who was pregnant with Seth Brundle's baby the last time we saw her, giving birth at a lab run by Bartok Industries, the company which had been funding Brundle's experiments in the previous picture. Veronica dies giving birth, but the child survives. Seth's son comes into the world encased in a mutated larval sac which has to be surgically removed to free the seemingly healthy infant within, letting the audience know early on that the kid's life is probably gonna be anything but normal.

    From there The Fly II follows the rapid physical and intellectual development of Martin Brundle. We see excerpts from his life as he is raised in a controlled clinical environment designed and operated by Bartok Industres, with company CEO Antonius Barok (Lee Richardson) acting as a surrogate father figure to the boy. By the time he is three, Martin is the size of a ten year old and has the intelligence of an incredibly gifted college student.

    These sequences are some of the best in the film, as we are introduced to Martin and begin to understand his natural precociousness. The film is effective at establishing a sense of sympathy with this boy who is gifted beyond measure, yet finds himself isolated from the outside world, his only companions a lab full of condescending scientists who treat him as a test subject.

    Martin's ever evolving curiosity about his condition (which, he has been informed, is so rare that only he and his father have ever suffered from it, leading to it to be named “Brundle's Disease”) is kept in check by a cover story the doctor's have concocted, explaining that a series of injections they administer are the reason he's alive. The truth is more sinister: They are in fact keeping a close eye on him in the hopes that whatever it was that happened with his father will repeat itself, providing Bartok Industries with an exclusive breakthrough in genetic manipulation they can then exploit for a profit.

    The film then shifts ahead to Martin's fifth birthday. By now he's physically matured into a grown man (Eric Stoltz), with an IQ that would put Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking to shame. Martin is approached by Bartok, with whom he now enjoys a close familial dynamic, and is told he no longer has to live in the lab.  Bartok sets Martin up in his own apartment elsewhere on the company site and asks him to come work for him, picking up the teleportation research where his father left off.

     Martin is initially reluctant, the result of an episode that transpired when he was younger, when he witnessed an attempt by Bartok Industries technicians to use the telepods to teleport a Golden Retriever he had befriended earlier. Needless to say, the experiment did not end well for the animal.

    After some coaxing and an opportunity to study his late father's research (a scene which puts some deleted footage from the first film to excellent use)  Martin is drawn by the complexity and potential of the telepod project and agrees to carry on his father's work.

    While working at the lab one day, Martin comes across another employee named Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga, best known as Jo Reynolds from Melrose Place and Princess Vespa in Spaceballs) and after a meet cute which earns points for not making me want to retch (as many such scenes often do), the two strike up a romance.
    It's also around this time that Martin's other set of genes begin to take over, leading him to quickly deduce that something more than a mere disease is afflicting him as the earliest stages of his inevitable physical transformation began to manifest. He quickly uncovers the truth about both his condition and Bartok's nefarious motives, going on the run with Beth as they attempt to evade the company while desperately trying to find a way to undo his mutation.

    The Fly II did a fair amount of business at the box office and it wasn't technically a financial failure but, at the time, it was critically panned. I've never understood that. To be honest, not only do I think this is one of the most unfairly maligned sequels I've ever seen,  I'm also of the opinion that -in some regards- it works better than the original.

    Now don't get me wrong- I absolutely love The Fly. I'm ready to step up and afford that film as much reverence as anyone else. It's a masterpiece and deserves every accolade it received.

    But The Fly II tells an even more tragic story. This time it isn't a scientist who suffers after an accident in his lab changes him. This is the chronicle of a man who is born into his situation. Martin Brundle has no choice but to face the thing inside of him. From the very moment he's born, he's predestined to transform into a monster, which gives his plight that much more gravitas.

    Eric Stoltz brings just the right mix of empathy and intelligence to Martin to have the audience really invested in his eventual fate.  It's to the movie's credit that later in the film, after his human form has been stripped away altogether, we are shown that the character's inherent decency is still alive inside the beast, whereas by the end of The Fly, Seth Brundle's condition had driven him insane.  Indeed, there's a scene where the young couple seek advice from Stathis Borans, the unfortunate ex boyfriend of the Geena Davis character in the original film (John Getz,  reprising the role for a superb cameo) and it comes out that Martin knows of a potential cure but is unwilling to employ it, as it would involve sacrificing a human life. This degree of nobility raises the question of who the true monsters in this narrative are, adding depth to the story.    
    Zuniga too is in top form as Beth, bringing a level of plausibility and likability to the role that is beyond what the genre usually offers.  She and Stoltz have a tangible chemistry on screen which makes their story that much more engaging. Their pairing seems perfectly natural, never slowing the film down.

    Then there's the subtext of the father-son relationship between Bartok and Brundle. There's a moment when Martin -his face already having taken on a rough, scaly texture as he's begun to transform-  discovers the full scope of Bartok's plan for him. This sequence ends with a direct confrontation between the two, during which Martin looks directly into the eyes of this man who has betrayed him –the same man he has held up his entire life as a father figure– and sadly tells him “I loved you.” Most creature features skip on the human factor in favor of the slimy stuff and gore effects, but The Fly II stays consistent with the tone of its predecessor,  making the human relationships a major factor in why events eventually transpire they way they do.

    Don't take that to mean that this movie skips on the nasty stuff, though. This is definitely what you'd call a “hard R”.  The visual effects here are top notch. In fact, Martin's post-transformation creature state in this film is such a marvelously realized wonder of animatronics and puppetry that I thought it surpassed the creature design at the end of the first film. And Walas doesn't skip on the red stuff by any stretch.  This film doesn't shy away from bringing the gruesome.
    Combine all of this with an ending which circles back to the aforementioned incident with the dog Martin befriended as a child to provide one of the most satisfying conclusions I've ever seen, and you have a slam-bang slice of eighties horror that should delight, horrify and entertain any dedicated genre fan.

    With strong core performances, a surprising amount of heart and amazing practical effects work throughout, The Fly II is a clever, under-appreciated sequel that is very much an equal. It deserves another look. ***** Five stars, my top score.
 

 

DS ULLERY