*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*
Nathan:
Hello and welcome to The Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast. It’s the podcast where a filmmaker, a comedian, and their wonderful guests experience our way through the 80s movies we think we love or might have missed with these…
Krissy:
…our grown-up eyes, to see how we think they hold up. And today we’re talking about The Fly, a movie selection from 1986, about which Letterboxd says, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common house fly manages to get inside the device, and the two become one. Bum, bum, bum.
Krissy:
To become one.
Nathan:
Yes, in a very unromantic way.
Krissy:
Uh-huh. To become one. I’m Krissy Lenz, one of the directors and a performer at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre in downtown Mesa, Arizona.
Nathan:
And I’m Nathan Blackwell, an independent filmmaker with Squishy Studios, also in Phoenix, Arizona.
Krissy:
Yay. And joining us today is a return guest, back by popular demand, to do another creepy, creepy movie.
Nathan:
It is the fabulous artist, Eric Weir. Hello, hello.
Eric:
Thank you so much for having me back.
Krissy:
We’re so excited to have you. As soon as we had you on, we were like, “What other movies are we doing?”
Nathan:
And then, The Fly. It was like, “What else is gross?”
Krissy:
What else is gross? I have a feeling I’m going to talk a lot about The Dark Crystal too, because it’s a similar feeling.
Nathan:
The Dark Crystal never gave me nightmares.
Krissy:
No, it probably didn’t upset your stomach either.
Nathan:
No. That’s the thing, The Dark Crystal is a level of darkness I’m into. And this is the one that as a child I was afraid of. Be very afraid.
Krissy:
Be very afraid. I wrote down the number of times I was heaving.
Nathan:
In my…
Krissy:
…trying to be like, “Keep it together, Krissy. Don’t you barf.”
Nathan:
Right. I had like a sense memory in the middle of this movie. So I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve seen this movie.
Krissy:
Is it really? Same for me. But I’ve known about it forever, and I’ve seen moments of it. And I had forgotten just how averse or scared of seeing this movie I was, until it got into the bathroom scene.
Nathan:
The curio of history. It’s like, oh yeah, this stuck in my mind for years because people would describe it to me, and I was like, “Nope, nope, nope.” And then I’m watching the first 45 minutes of the movie, and it’s like, “Oh, this is so good. Why have I never seen this before?”
Krissy:
Yeah, I definitely had a block about seeing this movie beforehand, and I totally forgot about that. By the time it got in there, it’s like, okay, we’re in it, we’re doing it.
Eric:
Serious stuff in that movie.
Nathan:
Yeah, not joking around. I mean, this is 1986, so forty years ago. In a lot of ways, this has been the pinnacle of body horror.
Krissy:
And that’s why I was afraid to watch it and was really dreading this, because I am not a body horror girly. I’m not a David Cronenberg girly, and I was just so nervous to watch this. But is this a favorite of yours, Eric? Is this a go-to?
Eric:
Oh, God, absolutely. It’s just the exact reasons that you, Nathan, said you didn’t want to see it as a kid were the reasons that I wanted to see it as a kid.
Nathan:
At ’86 I was way too young to see it in the theaters. It finally came out on HBO. It’s not just the gross special effects, because they are disgusting, but also because it’s such a tragedy, and you feel so much for these people that it makes those effects so much more impactful. When I finally saw it, I was eleven years old, and I was like, “What the fuck?”
Eric:
I absolutely fell in love with it.
Krissy:
I think it’s a good movie. It was just so hard for me to get into because I knew what was coming.
Nathan:
Yes, absolutely. And this is not my first Cronenberg movie at all. I’ve seen probably four or five of his movies, but this was the Rubicon I had never crossed. I feel like time makes this movie easier to watch for the first time, for those of us in that place. The effects are great, still a little dated, but baby Jeff Goldblum, baby Geena Davis, it gives it a novelty and makes it easier to watch that way.
Krissy:
And they’re wonderful. The two of them obviously have great chemistry. We know they’re a real-life couple at this time, and they’re so great together. And then there’s a third guy…
Nathan:
There’s so few people in this movie.
Krissy:
There’s only one sort of B-plot, which is her former relationship with her publisher. He’s the only other guy in this movie. It’s like him and a baboon.
Nathan:
Yeah, right. And David Cronenberg as the surgeon, as the gynecologist.
Eric:
Yeah. Who knew he moonlit?
Krissy:
It was really like a bottle episode of a movie, where we’re almost entirely in the lab with Jeff Goldblum as he gets crazier and crazier, but he starts out so sweet and earnest and innocent, almost.
Eric:
Yeah, that goofy and smooth Jeff Goldblum kind of charisma. That was definitely the first time I was ever introduced to it.
Nathan:
Was this your first Goldbluming?
Eric:
That was my first Goldbluming, yes. I had never seen him before. I hadn’t seen Earth Girls Are Easy, or what was he in, uh, Silverado. I hadn’t seen any of those. So yeah, this is definitely my first Goldblum film, and man, it made an impact. He’s great.
Nathan:
Yeah, he is so good, and not the obvious choice, but he’s great for it. If you’re taking him from A to Z, he’s a great one to start at A, you know? Because he’s not overly ambitious. He’s definitely a little bit of the socially deficient genius who has trouble talking to people but is charming and clumsy. And he starts off in a very definite place. And the thing I really enjoyed about this film is how much of an emphasis, how interesting the relationship aspect of the story is.
Krissy:
Yes, me too. I really latched on to that. At first, when he’s clumsily trying to impress her when she first comes to his lab, and he zaps her stocking away, and he plays the piano for her, you’re like, “Oh, these are his best moves.”
Eric:
Yes.
Krissy:
And she’s sort of not having it, until she learns about the teleportation. And then when she does finally seduce him, it felt a little bit to me like she was doing it to get the story. But then I thought, no, she genuinely loves him.
Eric:
Like when they’re in bed together and she’s like, “Oh, I just want to eat you up,” I was like, oh, that’s so sweet.
Krissy:
For a moment I was like, “Oh no, is that gonna happen?”
Eric:
Exactly. It’s Cronenberg, I don’t know what the rules are. But this is the movie that, even if it didn’t have the horror elements that it does, I could easily watch a movie about just that couple, because they were very interesting just playing off each other.
Nathan:
Yeah, if it was about the teleportation device, or some other thing, and it was just about them keeping it together while he’s onto some big project, I was totally in.
Eric:
They didn’t even need to have any of the vomit and stuff. I’m glad they did, but they didn’t need it to get it. I think marketing-wise it helped.
Nathan:
Totally, it helped, absolutely.
Krissy:
There was so much vomiting. And every time I was like, “Who’s next?”
Eric:
Were there any parts of this that you didn’t know were coming, that you were like, “Oh God”?
Krissy:
So much of it. The scene Nathan was talking about, where he’s in the bathroom and he’s all gross and his tooth falls out, and then he’s like, “Oh, well, here you go,” into the medicine cabinet, and there’s all these parts in there.
Eric:
I literally had to pause it and walk away for a little bit. Just like, “Get some hair.” I kept thinking, “You have to go back, Krissy. You have to go back.”
Krissy:
And then it’s the pens.
Eric:
Oh, go ahead.
Krissy:
I was just saying, then at the end, where she snaps his jaw…
Eric:
…off, and he bursts out and becomes…
Krissy:
…the ultimate fly creature, and all of his pieces and parts are falling off, and the fly is like merging out of him.
Eric:
I was just like, “Keep it together, Krissy. Keep it together.” That was close to the end.
Nathan:
I was surprised at how much I had known beforehand. That was the only part that was a surprise for me.
Eric:
The end?
Nathan:
Yeah, where he goes to final form. I was surprised at how much I knew what was coming beforehand, not in terms of the story beats, but in terms of the progression of his transformation. I’m wondering if I had peeked a little, or someone had told me, or I’d seen stuff, but I knew about the bathroom, I knew about the degradation. It was really the last fifteen minutes where I was thinking, “Oh, how is this gonna…” This movie does such a great job of escalation, because really, you only have three characters, there’s only three locations. There’s the laboratory warehouse, there’s the office, and then there’s the bar.
I guess technically there’s also the doctor’s surgery center. But how do you keep telling the story and keep turning it and twisting it? Because it could be very boring if he finds out he’s the fly and she’s hanging out with him all the time. They use this device of her leaving and then coming back, and then there’s a new development. She comes back and there’s a new discovery, he’s climbing on the ceiling, or she comes back and now he’s super gross in a new way.
Eric:
Yeah, the ear falls off and she hugs him.
Krissy:
And she hugs him. His ear falls off and she hugs him.
Eric:
Yeah, on the ear side that just fell off.
Krissy:
I was like, “Wow, she really is in love with Brundlefly.”
Eric:
She’s not just like, “Your ear just fell off.” It’s never-falling kind of love. When my ear falls off, I get a hug? I’d never eat donuts again.
Krissy:
No, oh my god. And even the subtler parts, when he first awakens and he’s doing…
Eric:
…gymnastics in his apartment…
Krissy:
…and then he’s shoveling sugar into his coffee, I’m like, she is remarkably taking this with a grain of salt. In my book, I would have liked it if there was a little epilogue where she did write the book, and she’s gonna have some explaining to do when she takes her ex to the hospital and he’s got a dissolved hand and foot.
Eric:
Yeah, and there’s a body of something on the floor of her ex-boyfriend’s place.
Krissy:
And Brundle just disappeared.
Eric:
He could’ve slipped on his ear on the way out.
Krissy:
You know what? That would have been perfect. You know why? Because who produced this movie? Mel Brooks.
Eric:
Oh, that’s great. He did The Elephant Man as well. That dude takes some chances. I love it.
Krissy:
Thank all that is holy for the wonderful Mel Brooks. I also read that Michael Keaton was offered the role and turned it down. He would have been grosser, though, I think, because he’s so edgy to begin with, and Jeff Goldblum is so charming.
Nathan:
Yes.
Krissy:
Not that Michael Keaton isn’t charming, but he’s just more intense.
Nathan:
Yeah, he would have been a more intense bug. And when he was feeling high, because when Goldblum first goes through the teleporter, he comes out feeling like a million bucks, and he can’t get enough of everything, and he’s up and up and up, Michael Keaton would have been really intense during that scene, and really aggressive for when the arm-wrestling scene came up.
Krissy:
Oh, the arm-wrestling scene. Oh my God, and they just walk away. He just grabs the woman and he’s like, “Okay, this is fine.”
Eric:
She’s like, “I’m still into it.” You know what’s interesting is that scene, out of all the scenes in the movie, there’s people’s faces falling off, there’s vomit dissolving other people’s hands, and this is one person, really. But the scene where the arm-wrestling happens and the guy breaks his wrist, so many people go, “Oh God, that was the worst scene ever.” Because that was the most realistic one, I guess, that could actually happen to him.
Nathan:
Well, yeah, okay, let’s do an impromptu poll. What was the worst?
Eric:
What was the grossest?
Krissy:
The first vomit, on that donut.
Eric:
I was like, that sound and everything was, oof.
Krissy:
And then he’s like, “Oops, that was disgusting.”
Eric:
“I’m so sorry, this is part of the process now.” Nathan, what’s yours?
Krissy:
Except this, the scene that got me the hardest was when you hear the ex-boyfriend, whose name is Stathis…
Eric:
Stathis? What a weird name, I couldn’t get it right, I wrote it down several times.
Krissy:
…Stathis is watching the video, and you hear him describe the process of eating, and then you hear it happen. I was just like, “Nope.”
Eric:
He’s making the face the whole time, “Oh my god, oh my god, nope.” So gross. There was actually a scene I thought was maybe the most disturbing, that didn’t make it into the film. Do you know about the monkey-cat scene?
Krissy:
No.
Eric:
I read about it. So, really quickly: he’s already disintegrating, and he’s trying to figure out how to switch the genes or whatever. So he takes one of the baboons that lived, the only baboon that lived…
Nathan:
The only baboon who lived. And then he takes a cat, puts it in the other telepod, tries to fuse them so he can separate them in the experiment. Doesn’t go well. One of the telepods opens up, and there’s a fused, deformed monkey-cat amalgamation on the ground, and it jumps at him. He’s terrified, it runs under a table or something, he grabs a lead pipe and smashes it to death. It’s ridiculously gross. Then that’s over, and then he’s like, “Oh god,” he has a pain in his side, and he looks down and there’s a leg, a fly leg, coming out of his ribs, and he grabs it and tries to pull it off, and he can’t, so he chews it off.
Krissy:
That’s probably why they didn’t use that scene in the movie.
Eric:
I think that would’ve gotten it an NC-17.
Nathan:
That’s probably a good reason. In its defense, if he had done that and it hadn’t worked, we’d be thinking, “Oh, he’s gotta find a way to separate himself.” I’m thinking, as Geena Davis is there and he’s turned a corner and says he’s more insect than man, the man’s gone or whatever, I’m still thinking that’s his plan, that’s his move. We’re rooting for the human side to science himself out of this. So if it had already failed, then we’d know that’s not an option.
Krissy:
Right, exactly. When he says he wants to fuse with her and the baby, you’re like, “Okay, I can see his adult logic of thinking this is a good idea,” but she should have been way more afraid.
Eric:
Uh-huh.
Krissy:
So I thought he was going to try and fuse with Stathis. That felt like the obvious solution, use his pure form, but nope, he’s gonna vomit all over him.
Eric:
Well, he didn’t want to fuse with somebody who just had his hand fall off. He got hurt.
Nathan:
So okay, my vote for grossest moment was probably the first baboon trial, because the baboon has no idea what’s up. Poor dude.
Krissy:
I read that everyone was really afraid of the baboons, and the only person who could control them was Jeff Goldblum, because he was so big.
Nathan:
Baboons are so frickin’ scary. When I worked at the Phoenix Zoo many years ago, that was one of the animals where if it gets out, it’s, “Sorry, we gotta go full Jurassic Park.”
Eric:
Even some of the big cats are relatively pussycats compared to the baboons, and specifically the mandrills. I had a client who was born in South Africa, who saw a man get killed by a baboon.
Nathan:
Yeah, not to go on a tangent, but some of the most dangerous animals in Africa aren’t the classic ones, it’s baboons and hippos.
Krissy:
Hippos will get you. When you talk about how many kills certain animals are responsible for, whatever you think hippos are responsible for, it’s a hundred times higher than anything. They used to be smaller animals, so they still have that anxiety, but now they’re really big animals, and they’re underneath your boat.
Krissy:
And they would love to eat you.
Eric:
No, they don’t eat you.
Nathan:
They’re just gonna freak out and kill you.
Krissy:
Well, they could at least do the decent thing and eat you at that point.
Eric:
I think they’re vegetarians. That’s insulting. You’re gonna kill me but not eat me? Can you imagine if the hippo had gotten into the telepod? “Oh my God, Brundle-hippo.”
Krissy:
That reminds me of Tusk.
Eric:
That makes me think of how gross Tusk was.
Krissy:
The first baboon transfer, and the gross, grody mess that became, really reminded me and put me in mind of The Thing.
Nathan:
Which was…
Eric:
…what, three years earlier?
Nathan:
No, it was the same year as E.T.
Eric:
So that was ’84? No.
Nathan:
No, that was ’82.
Krissy:
Let’s use our little boxes. All right, 1982, you nailed it.
Eric:
That’s how I tell years, by what movies came out.
Krissy:
By what movies came out, yeah. You’d think we’d be better at it, but we’re not.
Eric:
But there was a lot of body horror that came out around that time, you got The Thing…
Nathan:
If you ask Krissy, yeah, The Fly is gross.
Eric:
It’s a gross, wet man, a naked, gross, telescoping head…
Nathan:
…doing music, throbbing brain…
Eric:
Speaking of music, with The Fly we got Howard Shore producing this heavy, melodramatic score that’s just bad, bad, and it’s so impactful because he really ramps it up in those last five minutes, where Brundle is crawling and he puts the shotgun, which devastated me even as a kid. I was like, this is so fucking bad, especially as a kid.
But then you have his score behind it just punching you in the head, and it’s like, oh my god, this is almost insufferable, but in the best way possible, in an entertaining way.
Krissy:
I was watching this on a Sunday afternoon, and I was supposed to go do something with a friend afterwards, and I was trying to squeeze it in, and he showed up right as the last ten minutes were happening, and I was like, “I gotta finish this, sorry.”
Eric:
This is what we grew up for fun, you kids and your substances.
Krissy:
Yeah, and that’s why I didn’t see the show.
Eric:
I’m afraid of it. That’s the new “I’m afraid.” So good, but it’s so over the top, like ridiculous.
Nathan:
No, I’m a hundred percent sure I would enjoy it, but there’s never the moment where I feel like I’m in the mood for the substance.
Eric:
Body horror is like cilantro. Either you love it or you hate it.
Krissy:
Yeah, and to me, it tastes like soap.
Eric:
And then torture porn, I can go there. No, I’ve seen a couple, and it’s just dumb. It’s just, “Let’s see how far we can go.” Sorry, Eli Roth.
Krissy:
Sorry, Eli Roth, but no thank you. I started to rewatch Cabin in the Woods, the Eli Roth movie.
Eric:
Oh, Cabin Fever.
Krissy:
Cabin Fever.
Eric:
That’s it. Cabin in the Woods, yeah, that’s the one.
Krissy:
Cabin in the Woods is the Joss Whedon one.
Eric:
That was really good. Drew, what’s his name… Drew Goddard.
Krissy:
Uh-huh. 45-year-old me cannot. We turned it off because young me could handle it, but 45-year-old me cannot.
Nathan:
Yeah, it’s not that we’ve got queasier stomachs, it’s that I’ve got fewer days ahead of me than behind me. I don’t need this in my life.
Nathan:
Having said all that, this was a good time.
Krissy:
I agree.
Nathan:
I still don’t think I’m gonna give it a great score.
Krissy:
Because I’m never watching it again.
Nathan:
I could watch it again.
Krissy:
This is our Halloween pick, so it is a great Halloween choice, if you can’t get Silence of the Lambs.
Eric:
It’s a great Halloween choice, but it’s not gonna be a go-to, like, “Hey, it’s Christmas, we’re all hanging out, what do we put on in the background.” Something else is more appropriate, it’s not a background movie.
Nathan:
It’s more of a tight, ninety-minute movie.
Eric:
Only an hour and a half long, which, with all the information they packed into it, is very impressive. It really is like a straight arrow.
Nathan:
It could be a stage play.
Eric:
The fun!
Krissy:
Oh wow, I would love to see that, that would be such a challenge.
Nathan:
Or with puppets.
Eric:
Oh my god.
Krissy:
Oh, they definitely do. I think there’s just not enough characters.
Nathan:
There’s not enough characters.
Eric:
No, there’s more than a lot of things, well, we did get the Tawny character.
Krissy:
Oh yeah, Tawny.
Eric:
I was so afraid he was gonna put her in that thing. When Geena Davis comes in and it’s like, “Be afraid, be very afraid,” I was like, “Yeah, you’re not afraid enough.” You’re just hanging out with no shirt on, thinking you’re having a party, but nope, this guy looks gross.
Way more serious than you think. Could I tell a very quick story? Sorry, but Tawny reminded me. It came out in ’86, I was too young, but I saw all the behind-the-scenes stuff, I wanted to see it so bad. I love monster stuff. My parents were like, “Hell no.” So finally it comes on HBO, I begged them to see it. “Can I watch this movie?” So my parents said, “All right, we recorded it, we’re gonna preview it for you, make sure it’s okay.”
They said, “Go play for a couple hours, we’ll watch this movie.” And I was like, “Oh my god, I’m gonna see this movie.” Finally my dad comes out and says, “All right, we watched it, and it’s pretty heavy, but we think you can handle it, we know how much into special effects you are.” He said, “You can watch it.” So I went in and I’m watching this movie, and it gets to the bar scene, the wrist-breaking scene, I was like, “Oh fuck.” But then it gets to the scene where he carries Tawny up to his apartment, and remember the shot where Tawny is sitting in the chair watching him in the telepod, and it pushes in on her, she shifts around, and you see her jacket open, and she doesn’t have a shirt on, and I’m sitting there going, “Ooh, cleavage town, boobies and monsters.”
So right then, all of a sudden, and this is why I hate baseball to this day, the screen switches to a baseball game.
Krissy:
No.
Eric:
I was like, “What the fuck? I thought I sat on the remote or something.” And then it went back to the movie about thirty seconds later, and I said, “Mom, did you just edit this movie for me so I could see it?” And yeah, a couple scenes were really… I was fifteen before I realized that Geena Davis gave birth to a maggot.
Krissy:
So they edited the dream sequence.
Eric:
Which I appreciate them for now, because that was way too fucked up for me to see. How old were you again?
Krissy:
Eleven.
Eric:
Yeah, that’s right. So even, “Mom, what the fuck did you just do?”
Krissy:
My dad used to do that too. He had a video production company, so we had an editing bay, and he would record the movies off of HBO and then edit out the… I didn’t realize Top Gun had a sex scene until I was an adult.
Eric:
And I saw it for the first time and I was like, “Oh, I thought they just went straight to beach volleyball.” I didn’t realize what sex is.
Krissy:
Yeah.
Eric:
But it’s kind of nice, because our parents basically gave us something to look forward to, like how DVDs have extras. Those weren’t extras, but to us they were, they were like a first time.
Krissy:
All new, yeah.
Nathan:
I guess my version of that was seeing so many of these movies on TV. We’d get the commercial breaks in them, and there would be edits, but the first time re-watching these movies without the commercial breaks, I would anticipate, “Oh, this is the moment it goes to commercial,” and feel like I’d missed something when the break wasn’t there. You wouldn’t just watch it, you’d imprint it on your mind, you’d see it like twenty times, “Oh, time to go to the bathroom.”
Krissy:
And then you grow up and see the unedited movie, and you’re like, “What do you mean, there’s boobs?”
Nathan:
“Oh, this is what movies are.”
Eric:
I don’t even know if The Fly made it to network television, even edited, because it’d be a ten-minute movie.
Nathan:
I can’t imagine. But it was a staple on HBO, which is probably where I saw some of these moments and pieces from, because I’ve definitely seen him climbing on the ceiling, I’ve seen moments of him in the bathroom, though I don’t think I watched the whole thing. But I don’t think I saw any of the Geena Davis romance lead-up.
Eric:
Well, then maybe the trailer also kind of imprinted on it.
Nathan:
I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a lot of these moments just in making-of documentaries and visual-effects features, the kind of thing that’s on TV or on DVD bonuses when they talk about visual effects. Because it’s a milestone movie, when we talk about horror and body horror, this really put it front and center.
Krissy:
Very much so. And it won the Oscar for best makeup effects.
Eric:
Yeah, Chris Walas, who also did Gremlins.
Krissy:
Gremlins, yay.
Eric:
That was horror to me too, when she puts that gremlin in the microwave.
Nathan:
Wasn’t there one in the blender?
Eric:
Blender, microwave, Chris Walas loves his creature guts, he’s good at it.
Krissy:
He’s just like, “What can I mix, what can I put egg yolk into that’s disgusting?”
Nathan:
I would say probably even to this day, there’s a one-percent chance I’m gonna think about Gremlins when I put something in the microwave. It was maybe a third of the time in the eighties and nineties, and now it’s just reduced to a little fragment of an electrode in my brain. One percent of the time I’ll think of Gremlins.
Eric:
Depending on what you’re heating up.
Nathan:
Yeah, exactly.
Krissy:
I also thought it was kind of reminding me of a King Kong sort of thing, because when he crashes through the glass wall of the place where she’s gonna have the abortion, and the doctor kindly says, “It is the middle of the night,” and she’s like, “Yeah, but we need this abortion now,” and he says, “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” and he scoops her up, and she doesn’t fight him or anything, she’s just like, “Well, I guess we’re doing this now.”
Eric:
And he carries her away.
Krissy:
And it was like King Kong, because she starts out tough as nails, and then by the end she’s like, “But I don’t want to blow his head off,” and it’s like, “Girl, blow this thing’s head off.”
Eric:
It’s asking you very nicely to blow its head off, do us all a favor, what’s the nicest way to ask? Did you also notice, and it took me years to notice, when the final stage of Brundlefly pops out and falls on the ground, that it wasn’t just Brundlefly, but the back half of him had melded with the telepod door, so he’s also partly the door, there’s cables coming out of him too, which is like, oh god, it’s even worse.
Krissy:
It’s even worse.
Eric:
He’s partially emerging.
Nathan:
Someone accidentally put some other tools, or a VCR, in there, so he’s part VCR too.
Eric:
Did you see Videodrome? No? It’s also body horror, and there’s a part where a guy inserts a VHS tape into a vaginal opening in another man, and stuff happens. Maybe we could do that next.
Krissy:
Double feature. On my new podcast, Krissy throws up a lot.
Eric:
I did see Earth Girls Are Easy, and there was a Jeff Goldblum transformation in that one as well.
Nathan:
Oh yeah, but it’s a reverse transformation. He starts off in a weird place and then turns into Jeff Goldblum.
Eric:
Speaking of double features, this movie, The Fly and Aliens, was billed eventually, after they individually came out, as a double feature. Can you imagine, in 1986, four hours of that?
Krissy:
That’d be amazing.
Eric:
That would be good, though.
Nathan:
That’s a lot of fun.
Krissy:
It’s so much, I just think the life of a special effects makeup person, they must have iron stomachs to deal with that, because that vomit doesn’t exist until they will it into existence.
Nathan:
Anytime I see that, I just think of how hot it is inside the suit. Just living in Phoenix, I feel hot in shorts and a t-shirt, a sweaty mess.
Krissy:
Poor Jeff Goldblum has the lumpiest face ever. I did read that the special effects person was like, “I don’t know if I can work with Jeff Goldblum’s face,” but they were like, “No, you’ll make it work.” And he did, but can you imagine the special effects guy saying his face isn’t gonna work?
Eric:
I’m wondering if it’s because Goldblum has such an angular, characteristic face, they may have been worried they couldn’t use as many prosthetics because it would build it up too much, but they figured it out. “Life finds a way.”
Nathan:
It does.
Krissy:
Life finds a way. And now I’m talking to myself.
Eric:
Talking to myself, that’s chaos theory. That’s insect politics.
Krissy:
It has some really beautiful passages, where he’s like, “I was an insect that dreamed it was a man, and now the dream is over, and the insect is awake.” That was really beautifully written. I also read that he sort of improvised the part in the cafe where he’s ranting at her.
Eric:
Which is brilliant.
Krissy:
It’s so good, and I was just like, “Jeff Goldblum, what a gem.” I think if it had been two other people in this movie, I would have truly hated it.
Eric:
Well, they were just so good together, period. And then you put them somewhere where it’s not like a rom-com, which would be relatively easy, this is like true tragedy.
Krissy:
It surely is. But did you know there was an alternate ending?
Nathan:
No.
Krissy:
The studio wanted to do an alternate ending. They thought this was way too dark, so they actually filmed it, you can find it online, and it’s awful. He blows his head off, she’s crying, and it fades to her in bed with Stathis, and they’re holding each other and asleep, and it zooms into her, and she has a dream that she gives birth…
Eric:
…to a baby human with butterfly wings, and it flies off, and I vomited, because that was more disgusting than any other part of the movie, it was so bad.
Krissy:
Who thought of that?
Eric:
They said the audience was gonna be exhausted, so let’s do this, and then they said, let’s go back to the original ending. It’s so funny.
Krissy:
Bad, no thank you, just end with the head getting blown off.
Eric:
And the baby puppet, you gotta see it, you can find it on YouTube. I think it was stop motion, but it wasn’t very good, it was just bad.
Krissy:
I’m glad you didn’t see that, because it would have haunted my nightmares.
Eric:
It would have made the movie so fucking horrible.
Krissy:
No one would have remembered it, it wouldn’t be the horror classic that it is. I think it is, but I’m gonna have a really hard time rating this. So on a scale of one baboon to ten baboons…
Eric:
And ten baboons, of one fallen-off penis.
Krissy:
No, one moldy donut, only have one to lose.
Eric:
How many baboons do we think we really have?
Krissy:
We can’t keep going to the zoo. Where did he source those baboons from?
Nathan:
That’s a good question. Well, he couldn’t have gotten them online, because that wasn’t a thing yet.
Krissy:
It wasn’t a thing yet. He probably had to go to a zoo and say, “Do you have any problem baboons?”
Nathan:
I don’t think that’s how it works. I think it was probably a lot easier to order exotic animals back then.
Krissy:
Even though you had to know someone who knew someone, because there was no internet.
Eric:
Yeah.
Krissy:
So Eric, let’s start with you, I think you’re gonna give us the highest rating.
Eric:
And then we’ll just go down.
Krissy:
Yeah, and we’ll go down from there.
Eric:
I have to give it at least an 8.5 to 9. Because I grew up with it, but also, going back and realizing how well it was written, how well it’s acted, how impactful the acting and the tragedy is, you’re not just grossed out by special effects, you’re also drawn to these two people and feel sorry for them. I think it’s probably my favorite Cronenberg movie, but definitely eight-point-five to nine.
Krissy:
Okay, lovely. What do you think, Nathan, how many baboons?
Nathan:
I’m gonna go with eight. As horror films go, it’s very solid, and it’s great at escalation. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis are so damn charming, and I think why it’s not higher is just personal taste, but it’s a really strong horror film for sure.
Krissy:
I want to give it a seven, but I think I have to give it a six.
Nathan:
Every time someone vomited, it went down 0.25.
Krissy:
It went down, yeah.
Nathan:
And I think the seventh time…
Krissy:
I do think it’s good, but I’m never gonna watch this ever again, so I could give it a six. But for all the reasons you said, I feel like it is a good movie, and it is worth seeing once, if this is playing at your local revival movie theater for a Halloween screening and you’ve never seen it. I don’t know how I would react to it on a bigger screen than my TV, but can you imagine?
Eric:
Oh, the amazing thing, seeing it for the first time, a beer or two in you.
Krissy:
Oh yeah, then I definitely would have…
Eric:
…been part of it. Though the beers wouldn’t be in there for long.
Krissy:
Nope, nope, nope, nope, like they say, you’re just renting it anyway. So what about a deep cut recommendation, Eric? What have you got for us? I can’t wait to hear.
Eric:
I’m gonna do a deep cut recommendation of the same year, 1986. It was directed by Stuart Gordon, it’s called From Beyond. Have you seen it, Nathan, or heard of it?
Nathan:
Yeah.
Eric:
It’s another body horror film, based on an H.P. Lovecraft novel, with Jeffrey Combs…
Nathan:
Jeffrey Combs, yeah.
Eric:
…Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton. Basically an evil scientist creates something called a Resonator, which lets us see into other dimensions, and those dimensions happen to be populated by monstrous creatures trying to kill us. The doctor in it has a huge bodily transformation scene, lots of grossness, lots of guts. Krissy, sounds right up your alley.
Krissy:
Oh yeah.
Eric:
Run right out. It’s a little rough to deal with, but yeah, I’d definitely recommend From Beyond.
Krissy:
So everyone listening who’s on your side and mad at me right now, run out and see that movie if you haven’t seen it. What do you think, Nathan?
Nathan:
So mine is bridging the gap, I think these all reflect our own personalities and tastes. Mine is of the same era, I may have even recommended it before, I might actually like The Fly better than this, but it’s another classic: An American Werewolf in London. We’re talking about this hinging on the body transformation. When you look up body horror, it’s all the usual suspects, but when I think about just the painful realization of an unwilling subject transforming, An American Werewolf in London is Rick Baker’s makeup, and they make a thing out of the transformation, they wanted to show the whole thing and just how terrible and painful it was. On the whole, though, it’s less of a gross horror film than The Fly, but there are definitely shocking moments, and I’d say the characters are more normal, but slightly less likable than in The Fly.
Eric:
It’s an interesting mix of horror and comedy.
Nathan:
So if you haven’t checked it out and you’re just jumping into the pool with this kind of horror film, An American Werewolf in London is also a good one that straddles two genres, horror and comedy, a good introductory one.
Krissy:
Great job, John Landis. We haven’t done that yet, we could do it next Halloween. Heck yeah. And then I’ll recommend The Fly.
Eric:
You know what you could do? You could recommend The Fly too, there is a The Fly II.
Nathan:
Which is so bad. Is that when the Fly terrorizes the beaches, the Jaws beach, and then like Amity?
Eric:
Amity, Martha’s Vineyard, it’s so friggin’ bad, I’m not even gonna get into it. Does it have Jeff Fahey?
Nathan:
Oh, boy.
Eric:
Not Jeff Fahey, but it has Eric Stoltz, because they’d just come off getting the high price.
Nathan:
Oh my gosh, the high price.
Eric:
Jeff Fahey, yeah, oh boy.
Krissy:
So I have to recommend, there’s a Treehouse of Horror, and I have my little Bart Fly, I have that on my fridge.
Nathan:
Yay! There is a Treehouse of Horror, The Simpsons episode that parodies The Fly, it’s Treehouse of Horror VIII, season nine, episode four. But that’s not my official deep cut recommendation, I was thinking the whole time about another episode of TV, from Breaking Bad. It’s season three, episode ten, and it’s called “Fly,” and he’s in his huge, at that point, meth lab, very scientific, and there’s a fly buzzing around, and he’s so worried it’s gonna contaminate his beautiful blue meth, that the whole episode is him, it’s a bottle episode, trying to get this fly.
Directed by, who? Rian Johnson.
Krissy:
Was it really?
Nathan:
It’s like his first episode of TV ever.
Krissy:
Wow, it’s a great episode, it’s so good, and it made me think, if Jeff Goldblum was as intent on getting rid of this fly as…
Eric:
…Bryan Cranston was…
Krissy:
…he would have saved himself a whole lot of misery. So that is my deep cut recommendation.
Eric:
“Fly,” from Breaking Bad, season three. Real good one.
Krissy:
Thank you. So Eric, tell everybody where they can follow you, where they can find your wonderful art, and how they can support and become a fan of you.
Eric:
Well, you can follow me on Instagram, it’s @dubweir, D as in dog, U, B as in boy, W-E-I-R. You can see all of my fine art as well as my tattoo art. I tattoo out of Tempe, at a place called Wolf and Doe, and I do all kinds of fun, geeky, creepy tattoos. So you can get in contact with me or DM me on Instagram to set up an appointment, and I also do commission work for fine art as well.
Krissy:
Yay! And you’re already cool, I love it, thank you so much. You can also visit my website, dubweir.com.
Eric:
Perfect, thank you.
Krissy:
Where can we find the wonderful filmmaking of Nathan Blackwell?
Nathan:
Squishystudios.com, and I too am on Instagram, at Squishy Studios I believe.
Krissy:
You are at Squishy Studios, that’s right, that is correct. Hey, I’m on Instagram, we’re on Instagram at Most Excellent Pod, you can see all the episode art when it comes out and fun stuff like that. And if you want to see me in real life, you can find me at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre in downtown Mesa, Arizona. Come on in and tell me you’re a listener of Most Excellent 80s, and I will buy you a pint.
Eric:
Ooh.
Krissy:
Share a pint, and we can talk about The Fly.
Eric:
Krissy, we should do a night, see if she can do that, we could go for free. Free beer.
Krissy:
Hey, why not? You gotta tell me you’re a listener, I’m not gonna believe you if you don’t tell me.
Eric:
I can do that.
Krissy:
Yeah, it would be super fun. Hey guys, you can also listen to me on Gank That Drank, a supernatural drinking game podcast, also a product of TruStory FM. And if you’re here with us at the end, it’s because you want to support the pod, you believe in the pod, you want the pod to survive. So there’s a lot of ways you can support us. You can like, rate, review, subscribe, tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell your local goofy scientist who may or may not be teleporting baboons in his spare time, to listen to the pod, and we appreciate that.
But if you want even more content with Krissy, Eric, and Nathan, we are gonna be doing a little bit of bonus content, right after this. And you can find that by becoming a member at TruStory FM. Just click the little podcast link and click the join button, and you will get bonus content plus every episode a week early and ad-free, baby. But for now, while you’re out there in the world, please keep The Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast motto in mind. Be excellent to each other, and…
Krissy, Nathan, and Eric:
Party on, dudes!
