The Fly II (1989)

Episode 159, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig.

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: And we are into our month of sequels. We did this last year in February, it was Todd’s idea and I thought it was a good 1 and so we decided to do it again this year and when we started talking about it I just went online and started searching around for interesting horror sequels and I kind of made a list of things that sounded interesting to me. And I sent it to Todd, and 1 of the ones that I sent him was the movie that we’re doing this week, which is The Fly 2. There are a couple of reasons I wanted to do this. First of all, we’ve already done The Fly. Our friend Simone co-hosted with us that week, and We had a lot of fun talking about how sexy Jeff Goldblum is and all that stuff.

Todd: He’s a big Jeff Goldblum fan.

Craig: That’s right and I was surprised to find out that neither Simone Nor Todd had seen the fly to and that’s the other reason that I wanted to do it is because this is a movie that for whatever reason I saw a lot when I was a kid I feel like they must have played it on cable or or I don’t know network cable or something when I was a kid and I’m pretty sure that I saw the fly 2 well before I ever saw the original.

Todd: Oh I see.

Craig: Yeah and I may have been drawn to it because Daphne Zuniga is in it and I was a big fan of hers from Spaceballs. And Eric Stoltz plays the main role. He plays Martin Brundle, the son of Seth Brundle, Jeff Goldblum’s character from the first movie. When I was a kid I really liked it and I haven’t seen it in well over a decade I’m sure and I was kind of interested to go back and check it out and I don’t know my feelings about it are a little bit mixed positive for the most part but a little bit mixed. You hadn’t seen it, right? So did you know anything about

Todd: this? I knew nothing about it going in. I didn’t even realize that it picked up right where the first 1 left off. And actually, I mean, I think it’s a fine movie. There’s nothing horrible about it. It’s perfectly serviceable. I just, you know, I think after watching The Fly, both versions, you know, and you can go back and listen to our podcast on The Fly. We’re not going to talk too much about the originals, but you’ve got to a little bit when you’re talking about the sequel. On our original podcast about The Fly, I talked about how not only is The Fly by David Cronenberg an amazing and emotionally powerful film, but even the original with Vincent Price is surprisingly emotional for a different, slightly different reason, but along the same lines. It just seems like this story of this scientist who gets unwittingly pulled into his experiment and starts to transform into a fly. The wonderful thing about it is it really focuses on the people around them. What does this do when the person is breaking down? Yeah, it’s horrible for you, but it’s interesting how both of those movies seem to focus more on how does it affect others and that’s where I think the real emotional resonance is. I didn’t have high hopes for The Fly 2. It’s not, I think, a very notorious film, but it just doesn’t really mine that same emotional content really that the original 2 did, it would be difficult to do it or else you’d be kind of making the same movie a third time. Sure. And it really tries to, I think. It’s trying to get there, but in the end of the day, I think it’s just kind of a monster movie, you know? Yeah. And that, so as a monster movie, perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. We’ve seen much worse. Of course we’ve seen better. But there’s nothing wrong with this film. But in the lineage of what came before it, it’s a bit of a letdown.

Craig: Well, that’s how I ended up feeling about it too, and watching it again. And in the first, I don’t know, 30 minutes, maybe even 45 minutes, I don’t know. I thought that it was really kind of going places. And then in the second half, it didn’t fail to entertain me. I was engaged and I was enjoying it and there were interesting things going on, but I Did find myself thinking you know this it really is inferior to The original and that’s not really saying much. You know the original is kind of well excuse me I guess I’m talking about the Jeff Goldblum, which isn’t the original, but the 1 that directly precedes this movie. It’s kind of revered as a classic for the reasons that you’ve said, not only because there was a lot of innovation with the special effects and practical effects, but also because it does have such emotional resonance. And like you said, they go for it here, and there are parts, there’s 1 part in particular that just kills me in this movie.

Todd: I think I know which part you’re gonna say

Craig: to me. Oh yeah, I’m sure it’s really hard for you to guess which part

Todd: it is. I can’t wait for us to get there,

Craig: but I ultimately I did end up enjoying it And I think that some of that comes I think Eric Stoltz does a really good job in this movie You know he’s got kind of an interesting role to play The movie moves at a really fast pace. It’s an hour and 45 minutes and it moves along. So there’s a lot going on. So I expected that we would have tons and tons of plot to cover and maybe we do. We’ll see how it ends up. But I ended up not taking as many notes as I expected to.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like you said, it basically picks up right where the first movie left off. I don’t remember what Gina Davis’s character’s name was in the first movie. Do you? No. Veronica?

Todd: Something like that.

Craig: I think it was Veronica something like that But anyway, we find out in the first movie that she is pregnant She has become pregnant by Seth Brundle and and she became pregnant by him after he Did his whole teleport thing and it was really before he had started to go through any major transformation but the DNA swap had already happened so she’s pregnant with this weird fly DNA baby and we knew that At the end of the last movie and this movie picks up when she is giving birth Gina Davis chose not to reprise her role. They wanted her to They asked her and she declined For a couple of reasons. First of all, there was a fantasy birth scene in the Jeff Goldblum movie and she had found that somewhat traumatic and didn’t particularly want to relive it, which is what this role called

Todd: for. Yeah, that would have been everything she did in this movie.

Craig: Right. Well, that was the other reason that she wasn’t particularly interested, is that her character only really appears in the very beginning and she dies in childbirth. And that’s what happens. You know, it’s this tense birthing scene and she ends up giving birth to some kind of, I don’t know, like the science here is pretty wishy-washy She she gives birth to some kind of like pod or something and and then she dies even before an infant emerges from this pod.

Todd: Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. This pulsating, grotesque-like pod thing comes out of her stomach, and then after they’ve clipped the cord, they break it open like they know to do this or something. And you’re right, inside of it is this perfect, fully formed infant. Yeah, I think when you’re dealing with genetics and DNA mutations, especially in science fiction and horror, we have to give a lot of leeway to anything can happen. And that’s pretty much where you’ve got to go with this. There’s no hard and fast rule about what the fly can and can’t do, how fast he mutates, how he mutates, and this sort of thing happens a couple times in this movie.

Craig: Right. And that’s, you know, okay, so that’s where it picks up. Well, she gives birth at the facilities of Bartok Industries, which I don’t know, I know it played a role. Was that who he worked for in the original?

Todd: Was he maybe getting its funding from some investors or from some guy or something. Maybe, maybe. I think it’s kind of like that in a little bit because the Bartok Industries in the original had kind of nothing to do with him. He was on his own doing his own thing and under very little supervision as I remember, Pretty much in his apartment. Well, not his apartment, like a studio somewhere.

Craig: Sure. Well, anyway, now they are running the show, apparently. And when this baby, who they named Martin, is born, They keep him under observation, like strict observation. They basically raise him in a lab. They tell him eventually that he has this genetic disorder that’s incredibly rare, only 2 people have ever had it him and his dad of course they don’t go into any detail and and tell him that he’s a fly or anything but the main side effect I guess of this genetic disorder that is observable is that he ages at a rapid pace so when he’s 11 months old chronologically he’s really like 3 or 4 year old kid. And we see them doing, you know, like some blood tests on him and it’s a little heavy-handed. Like the scientists, there are 2 scientists that seem to be kind of in charge of him. I called them the bitch in the douche bag because that’s basically. Well,

Todd: you’re right it’s heavy handed. These 2, it’s established pretty quickly, Well, when he’s a baby or an infant, Dr. Janeway says to Mr. Bartok, who is, of course, the head of Bartok Industries and basically considers this kid his surrogate father because he’s like his corporate parent.

Craig: Right, right.

Todd: She says to him, As a clinical subject, I find him astonishing. But he does try our patients when it comes to medical examinations. And by the time we see him, you know, years later as he gets older and older, these people just hate this kid’s guts. Like, nobody can be nice to him at all, especially these 2. It’s hard to see why. He’s not a bad guy.

Craig: No, not at all. He’s actually very polite and mild-mannered and like he totally goes along with everything that they tell him to do and they’re just mean.

Todd: Yeah. Is it just jealousy or is it just this weird like he plays a trick on 1 of the guys. He’s got this, of course, when he looks like he’s, I don’t know, 10 or 12, he’s really only what, 4 or 5 months old, he has all these science experiments, he can put together all these things, he puts together this contraption that goes onto his head and interestingly enough, kind of makes him look like a fly in a way.

Craig: Yeah, it’s

Todd: got little antennas and stuff He like squirts water at him the bad scientist and he’s not again kind of weak How it establishes their hatred for him? It just seems awfully strong

Craig: it and honestly like seriously the kids there are 2 kids You know that play him as a child 1 very young who we only see for a matter of minutes really and then another 1 Who’s probably like 10 who you know? He’s a cute kid and like he’s a mild-mannered kid like It just doesn’t seem like there’s any reason for them to have such animosity. I mean, I guess everybody hates their job. I don’t know.

Todd: Maybe if your job was to take care of 1 kid every single day that was not yours, yeah, I guess it’s like a few years of babysitting, that would turn anybody off, especially if your kid is aging at a rapid pace and you have to go through all these phases so quickly Well,

Craig: and and like they they give him these shots every day that they tell him, you know is to slow his genetic mutation or something I don’t know but like it’s in the lady doctor even seems to like find joy in stabbing every day

Todd: I feel bad for this poor kid. Well, we’re talking absurdity. There’s this sequence where he is getting his blood drawn, and he’s a little older by this point, and she stabs him, and he says, oh, you missed the vein, and she doesn’t even seem to care. And then, like, The needle breaks off on his arm. Like how does that even happen? It was just so bizarre.

Craig: I always thought, you know, it’s silly, but when I was a kid I always thought, Oh, it’s because, you know, he’s this genetic mutant, so maybe his like tissue is really super strong or something like that. I don’t know if that but you’re right. First of all he says you missed the vein and then the needle breaks and blood starts shooting out of it. If she missed the vein blood is not going to come shooting out of the needle. But whatever science be damned. When he looks about 10 years old, we also find out that he’s incredibly intelligent and his mind is maturing even more quickly than his brain and he’s Super, super smart. So he wants to get out of his little room, but they won’t let him. And so he, I think, memorizes the number on 1 of the mean doctor’s security tags, and he gets into the computer and he makes himself up a security tag where he can pretty much go over he wants. The first night that he gets out he finds a lab full of research animals. He takes a liking to this beautiful golden retriever And they spend a very nice evening together and like the dog lays in his lap and he pets the dog and it’s have some wine some snacks Candlelight no, it’s just you know, he finally has somebody to talk to you know it’s like it’s kind of his actual first real connection with anybody. He feels a connection to Mr. Bartok, I don’t know what his name is, because Bartok treats him favorably and calls him his son so you know he does feel a connection to him, but this is a guy that just shows up a couple times a week to pat him on the head and, you know, like, it’s not a real relationship. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s not affectionate. It’s just, you know, okay, you say you’re my dad. So you are. So whatever.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So it’s sweet that, you know, he makes this connection with this dog

Todd: And I just have to say he makes his way to this dog You know you see a lot of crawling through air vents and movies This has to this has to be some kind of record for the largest air vents I’ve ever seen anybody this kid could practically walk through the air vents in this facility

Craig: You know cuz they’re always like sneaking around and try and get away and in this movie like he’s creaking through these air vents and it’s the noisiest thing ever. Like, surely somebody would hear, like, what is that? Like, uh-oh, raccoons in

Todd: the vent again or something. They’re like whole rooms and hallways in the, up above the suspended ceilings and all of these offices.

Craig: It’s crazy. Anyway, so the next day, I guess, they serve him dinner in his little lab room. But he stuffs it away in a plastic bag, and then he’s going to go take it to his friend, the dog. And so he goes to find the dog and the cage is empty but there’s a tag on it that says that it’s been moved to like area 17 or something. I guess intuitively he finds this place and he walks in to this big observation deck full of people who don’t notice him walking in wearing his huge helmet and we get the reveal of the pods from the first movie. Oh it is dramatic too. Oh yeah it’s this big orchestral score. Like it’s very exciting. And so, you know, having seen the first movie, we know what the pods are. They’re these teleportation pods or whatever. And that’s what caused all the trouble in the first 1. And so he watches as they put this dog in 1 of the teleportation pods. And of course we know that something terrible is going to happen but he doesn’t and it’s very You know like he’s waving at the dog and like the dog sees him and is like whimpering and excited to see him and stuff and then the teleportation happens But then this monstrous creature of a dog Jumps out and attacks the scientist now I have to say I have been putting myself on a time crunch to watch these movies. And so my partner has been forced to watch these movies with me the past several weeks. And this is not a movie that is up his alley at all, but he agreed to watch it. And I told him, because we are both big time dog lovers, as soon as we saw the dog, I said, do not get attached to this dog. And he said, oh, does he at least get to live for a while? And I was like, I don’t remember, but don’t get attached to him.

Todd: Yeah, sort of.

Craig: And after I said that, you know, like, he’s like, does he get to live for a while? Like then it’s right away that he gets teleported or whatever. And then this, you know, puppety monster dog jumps out and he’s like, oh, well that’s stupid. And I was like, no, seriously, it’s horrible. Like, don’t even think about it anymore. Cause it pops up later and it just devastates me. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

Todd: This is how you you break Craig down is you put seeds like these in the movie. Just put dogs in there when horrible things happen.

Craig: I can’t. I can’t handle it. I don’t like I I can watch people get you know hacked to bits by chainsaws but you hurt animals and I just can’t deal with it. They’re just too sweet and innocent and I can’t deal with it. But anyway, so the kid is traumatized by this, but Bartok is there and he tries to comfort him or whatever. And then we cut immediately to his fifth birthday party where he’s Fully grown, Eric Stoltz. Yeah. Bartok tells him, for your birthday, what do you want? And Eric Stoltz is like, you know what I want. He’s like, OK, I know. You want your privacy. You want to get out of this room, because he’s lived his whole life in this room, where they can watch him from behind mirrors and stuff. And he says, all right. And he takes him on a walk and he takes him to this lovely studio apartment and says, this is your apartment. You know, it’s your private place. No more prying eyes, no more mirrors.

Todd: Yeah. No more 2 way mirrors. Now real quick, before we get there, this scene for his birthday party, when he asks him if he wants his privacy, he tells him to say the magic word and make the mirror go away. Martin turns toward the big double mirror and I guess does something or literally says some word under his breath and the mirror shatters?

Craig: No, he throws the champagne bottle at it. Oh he did?

Todd: Okay, that makes a lot

Craig: of sense. Bartok hands him the champagne bottle and says they had a weird scene before when he was a little kid And it seems so odd like I don’t really even know how this It just seems like such an odd concept in this movie, But when he was a little kid, Bartok said to him,

Clip: You know, it’s knowing the right magic word that makes it happen. It’s a real magic word, a secret word, that you keep locked away inside your heart, and you never tell anybody. You know, you don’t tell anybody, and that’s what makes the magic work.

Craig: It’s so dumb. It’s so random.

Todd: Yeah. Well, you know, when the credits come up on this movie, it says that they’ve got 5 writers on it and in some ways it shows and this is 1 of them. Like you just wonder if this was something that was just a nibble of a bit that should have been bigger or in an earlier draft of the script made a little more sense than it does in this movie. But you’re right, it just seems super random. It does come into play later, but again, It’s just, it’s really poor. Yeah. It’s weird, it’s weird.

Craig: It seems superfluous, like, you’re right. Like it was a plot element that kind of just got diluted at some point and it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.

Todd: Well, okay, that makes sense, because I didn’t see him toss that bottle and I was thinking is he psychic now? What is this magic word? You know? Yeah

Craig: No, he tosses the champagne bottle.

Todd: And then he also offers him a job.

Craig: Because they’ve been working on these telepods, But they can’t get him to work. Yeah, and so he wants Martin to continue his father’s work And he says, you know, your dad was kind of a genius and maybe that was passed on to you so I want you to work on it Martin says I don’t like these things and He’s like I get it. It’s about the dog. I’m really sorry. And he says, I promise you, we did everything we could for your dog. And I promise you, it didn’t suffer. And so he convinces him. And so then, Martin starts working on the pods.

Todd: Interestingly enough, Jeff Goldblum makes an appearance in this movie, which was clever. He’s not actually in the movie as himself, obviously, because he’s dead. And he’s not in here as flashbacks either, but if you remember from the first movie, he had this thing where he was videotaping his progress. And that was a pretty happy accident because then they can pull up these videotapes, which are, you know, in storage at Bartok Industries, for him to watch. So that’s how he gets to know a little bit about what’s going on. And I feel like here there’s a real missed opportunity. It’s really just a couple times we see him talking about some very specific things about the test or about himself, but there’s almost a total detachment between this kid and these tapes of his father. Here would have been a very interesting moment to get him a little emotional about, you know, I mean, he’s kind of maybe by this point since they’ve let him out, they’ve given him a little more free rein, He’s diving back into his father’s work to continue it. You’d think, oh, he’s starting to maybe feel an attachment or start to question, you know, what was my dad like? What was his work all about? What drove him? You know, what’s driving me? What’s my legacy? There’s none of that. It’s just not that kind of movie. And so he watches a couple tapes and I think 1 of the tapes was actually pulled from a deleted scene that they didn’t include in the original fly, so that’s kind of nice. They had originally intended to do another tape that would have required Jeff Goldblum to come back and get makeup and stuff. And so I guess they canned that idea. They didn’t want to pay him or he wasn’t willing or something like that. So we don’t see too much more of him, but we do get little glimpses of him, which is always kind of nice.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: When you can throw back to the earlier movie with a character. The only other guy who carries through in this movie is the, like the third, the second guy, like there’s kind of a love triangle thing going on in the original and that character, Stathis, I think was his name.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: yeah. He comes in later, played by John Getz, but he’s the only guy carrying over from 1 movie to this 1. Sometimes a sequel can seem really cheap if there’s absolutely no link, you know, this kind of link between the 2. And so it was nice that they could do that, I think.

Craig: Well, and I thought that it was cool, and I guess probably just kind of a happy accident that the footage that they were able to use was footage that was not used in the original. So it feels kind of fresh. I mean, it’s not, really. But it feels like it, because we haven’t seen it before. I mean they could have very easily just used some of the footage that we actually saw in the first movie but you know that would have been rehashy which there’s nothing wrong with that I suppose but it’s nice that they had this additional footage that they could show us. And the only thing that bothered me about it was that they dubbed over Gina Davis’ voice and the lady who replaced Gina Davis, apparently they cast her because she looked like Gina Davis. Well, you barely see her at all.

Todd: Yeah, she’s got an oxygen mask over her most of the time anyway.

Craig: Yeah, so what’s… And she doesn’t sound anything like her. I almost would have rather they had somehow, you know, cast somebody that sounded more like her than looked like her, because that took me out of it just a little bit, but I agree. It is nice that we get this cameo of Jeff Goldblum, even if it is old footage, but old footage that we haven’t seen before, so awesome.

Todd: And he is also working night shift because he doesn’t sleep. It’s just like a fly, you know, he has a very short lifespan. Yeah. And so he’s working around the clock. And while he’s on night shift, he decides to go out and I guess explore a little bit.

Craig: He’s looking for something organic. He gets the pods working where they will effectively transport non-organic material, but he needs something organic so he goes out looking for a plant or something.

Todd: And then there’s a bit of hearty har har. He sees a little fly on the ground that is attached to a string that gets pulled away and then gets tossed again. And so when he grabs it and goes around the corner, it turns out that there is a woman in there who is practicing her fly fishing. Yeah, at work. Oh my god. Really? Which 1 of the fives idea was this? It’s

Craig: a really…

Todd: Yeah, it’s not clever, it’s really stupid.

Craig: It is. But anyway,

Todd: this turns out to be, like you said, Daphne Zuniga. I think she did this just a year or 2 after Spaceballs.

Craig: Yeah, Mel Brooks recommended her for the role. And she’s not, you know, I like her. She’s really pretty and she’s really endearing. She’s not the greatest actress in the world. Especially towards the end of the movie where the emotions start to get heightened. She’s a little melodramatic, but she is very charming and they do. She and Eric Stoltz have a nice chemistry, which I appreciate it. But her name is Beth and she has a cactus,

Todd: so… There’s some organic matter.

Craig: Right. I mean, it’s clear that he’s immediately drawn to her, as a young man who’s never been around a nice pretty girl before would be. And so he tells her that he’s working on the most important invention of all time, and she’s like, haha, good line, Romeo. Heard that 1 before. Yeah. He’s like, no, seriously, come look. He tries to transport the cactus but it comes out a mess.

Todd: And she’s not even impressed by that. Like, come on, throw this guy a bone. He may have come out wrong, but he teleported the darn thing.

Craig: Right, true. Like, the pot was still OK.

Todd: She just like rolls her eyes, OK, try again later. Call me back when you get this right.

Craig: Exactly. And immediately after that, we have that scene that you talked about before where the needle breaks off, but what’s interesting about that scene is that he tells the doctors that for the first time ever, he slept for 2 hours. And he’s impressed by that. And it seems like we’re supposed to believe that because he met this girl and had this interaction like he’s feeling and potentially becoming more human or at least that’s kind of The impression that I got.

Todd: It kind of gets dropped. It’s tenuous. Again, this seems to be like a thread that they’re maybe introducing, but it doesn’t really go anywhere else from that. It quite goes the opposite, to be honest. So after this, there is a romantic montage where we see him dancing with her in the shadows of the lab sharing a candlelit dinner with champagne on the catwalk above the lab. Doesn’t really take us out of their lab too much, actually. At this point, it’s basically the first movie. With this little twist that this guy doesn’t know, he didn’t do this experiment to himself, he’s already this way, we’re getting exactly the same thing. There’s a relationship kindling between these 2 people and you know it’s not going to end well anyway if that’s the way that the first movie went. So I was kind of rolling my eyes at this a little bit. Maybe if I’d just seen the movie by itself it wouldn’t have felt so weird. Although it still feels a little rushed.

Craig: It does, but at the same time it’s so 80s. Like you know what I mean? There were always these romantic montages. And so, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or what, but it didn’t bother me. In fact, I thought it was kind of cute. And especially since he, you know, like, he doesn’t have anybody. Like, he’s really just alone. And so now at least he has a friend to, like, dance in the lab with. You know, that’s nice.

Todd: I just wanted to know if he had told her he was 5 years old yet.

Craig: I know. I know! They sleep together later. I turned to my partner and she just slept with a 5 year old. So bad. But it’s okay because he doesn’t look 5. That’s all that matters, right? No, I’m just kidding That’s a terrible joke.

Todd: He performs like a five-year-old too, so That sexy was awful, okay,

Craig: yeah, so so they you know they have this little romance and then she, there’s gonna be a get together, like a work get together, like in the building, I guess. I don’t know, it’s all weird. It’s like it’s this big compound, I don’t even understand. So she invites him, she’s like, would you come? And he’s like, well, are there gonna be people there? She’s like yeah, he’s like oh, okay.

Todd: You know how I’m about people

Craig: Yeah That’s totally me like are there gonna be people there? Anyway, so he goes and she’s there and she looks all cute and she’s talking to 1 of her girlfriends And she’s like, I don’t know. He’s really shy hoping he’s that I hope he’s having fun or whatever We see him and he’s just standing there very awkwardly but this group of people walks by and they’re talking

Todd: Genetics we don’t make them we just keep my life You kidding? He’s our pride and joy here and specimens Our longest running engagement, so to speak. 2 years. That’s been alive for 2 years? You call him Timex. Takes a lickin’, keeps on tickin’.

Craig: And so he gets curious and he walks in the direction that they were coming from. And this didn’t bother me when I was a kid, but it’s so stupid, really, now. He walks out, like, onto the roof. Now, the scenario is stupid, because why would this thing be where it is? It doesn’t make any sense. Like he’s like on the roof and he looks down into like this big… You remember in Star Wars?

Todd: When Luke Skywalker gets tossed into this pit, and I don’t even, was it at Jabba the Hutt’s place, remember? Yeah, yeah. And everybody’s looking down and this cage opens up in the 1 corner and out comes this giant monster towards him and the ground’s covered with hay. Yeah. And all that. That’s like what this pit is. Right.

Craig: But it’s like an observation deck. And like they’re like a story above the bottom of the pit that they’re looking into. And it’s just this gross, nasty pit. Like, why? Why would there be this, like, observation deck on the top of this building right outside of an apartment? Like, I don’t, or whatever, I don’t even know.

Todd: Because it wouldn’t be super dramatic if it wasn’t.

Craig: Right, fair. Okay, so then this is the part that just kills me, and I, it really shouldn’t, but it does. So he looks down there, and what’s in there is his dog, in its terrible, terrible, deformed, tortured state. And this is clearly a puppet. I don’t even know if it was animatronic, if it was being moved by somebody off screen, I don’t know. It doesn’t look real at all. It looks totally fake, but it’s grotesque and it’s making these horrible, sad whining sounds.

Todd: Now wait a second. When you say it looks totally fake, Do you just mean that something this grotesque is going to look fake, or did you think it was kind of ineptly made?

Craig: Well, I don’t know if inept is the right word, but it didn’t look organic to me. It looked like…

Todd: Little bits and pieces were moving.

Craig: Yeah, like it was slimy and stuff, but it looked like a Jim Henson creation more than something that was actually alive. And thank God, because I couldn’t have handled it if it looked more real than it did. I can’t handle it. What I’m getting at is I can’t handle it even though it looks fake.

Todd: It’s just cruel. The idea of

Craig: it is

Todd: just terrible.

Craig: They’ve kept this poor, horrible, suffering animal. I’m going to sit here and cry talking about it. That’s how awful it is. Like, they make a point of saying it’s been 2 years, 2 years that this poor animal has been suffering in this terrible pit. And like not only that, But like they shove in like some slop for it to eat and it really is

Todd: just

Craig: like just disgusting and it drags itself over and it you know is Eating this slop and it’s clearly miserable and Then it just howls like in misery and it’s terrible. And of course it has a terrible impact on him because he knows what it is and he cries and cries and runs out and Daphne Zuniga chases him. And I don’t even know if she knew what was under there or Understood what the significance of it was I don’t know but he shuts

Todd: her out. He blames her for it somehow Yeah, why I don’t know

Craig: right? I don’t know either. I mean I guess just because she’s part of the organization, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s 5. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s 5. But he runs away and he locks her out of his space and he says, I never want to see you again. Don’t come around here or whatever. And then thank goodness, you know, he doesn’t waste any time in going back and putting this poor thing out of its misery. But the scene just kills me because he walks in and the dog lunges at him as it had lunged at the scientist earlier. But of course it would, it’s a terrified, in pain animal. I mean, that’s their instinctive reaction. And when he doesn’t react in fear or with violence then it calms down and it actually it seems as though it recognizes them And you can just see this poor, fake, disgusting dog. You can see its tail start to wag and it just kills me. Like literally I’m crying. And he sits down with it. He sits down with it and puts his head in its lap and pets it and then, thank God, puts it out of its misery. But I swear, and I’m sitting there with my partner and we’re both just silent and just staring at the screen and I look over at him and he doesn’t even look at me and he goes, I hate this movie.

Todd: Well, no joke. I got to get, I got to come to your side on this 1. This, this was the most emotionally heart wrenching scene in this film by far. This got to me too. What a horrible, horrible thing. You know, even back with him, befriending this dog. I mean, forget for a minute that it’s a dog and we just, bad things happen to animals is horrible, but it was almost Shades of Evil speak. You remember that with Ron Howard’s brother? Where he, you know, was this kind of lost guy and his only real friend in the world is this little dog, and then something terrible happens to this dog of his. It’s not just a cute dog that he found, but it was his companion for a while. And then something horrible happened to it, and his consolation was at least it was put out of its misery, but he didn’t forget about it. And then it turns out it hadn’t been put out of his misery so you know he’s got reason to be pissed off at Bartok who’s freaking lying to him all the time. Now okay so first of all let me finish with the dog thing. I thought the dog puppet was pretty good for the 80s. I know what you’re saying. Nobody’s going to think that this was a real creature, but I thought it was pretty good as I thought all of the special effects and practical effects in this movie were very good, the creature effects. The director of this movie, Chris Wallace, this is 1 of his first directing gigs, and 1 of his few actually, but he came up through Roger Corman. He worked on Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep, which is 1 that we’ve done. He had a small role to play on Star Wars Return of the Jedi doing creature design and effects. And a few years before this movie was the creator and designer of the Gremlins, which is another movie that we’ve talked about, and we’ve talked about him on that episode as well. Fantastic job on Gremlins. You can even see a little bit of that in this, when you see the fly at the end, I think that he’s almost got gremlin eyes, but you know, he comes up he does enemy mind. He does the origin, all the creature effects for the fly, which were outstanding. Yeah. Which we’ve done on this show. Then he went and did the makeup and creature effects for House 2, which we also did on this show.

Craig: Love it.

Todd: And I guess by this time, they had asked for a number of people to direct. David Cronenberg wasn’t interested in directing this movie. He wasn’t available, I guess, to direct the second 1. Boy, I would love to have seen this, by the way, directed by David Cronenberg. That would have been interesting. Even Sam Raimi was offered the part of directing this, but he and his brother Ted had written a treatment for it that was super goofy, and I think they were just afraid to put him behind it after that. And so he ended up with it. And so, you know, first time director, but obviously he made sure that the creature effects were solid because he also did them for this movie. And I thought it was good.

Craig: Well, it certainly was effective in tugging in my heartstrings. I shouldn’t say it looked bad. I just I mean it was it was good and it was heart-wrenching I Would say overall I thought the creature effects were good too And I actually like you said how interesting would it have been to see if David Cronenberg had done this because I feel like this movie, they must’ve felt like we have to step it up from the last 1 because they do. I mean, the eventually there is the complete transformation. He turns into, you know, this giant fly. And I really liked those effects too, and of course they were all practical, and they did a lot of really cool stuff with the camera work, and only showing certain parts of it at certain times.

Todd: Not to dwell too much on this, but I just have to say once again another really missed opportunity here Something that didn’t make a lot of sense to me is like we just said he gets really angry at her Why does he wait until so much later in the movie to get angry at mr. Bartok? I expected the next scene to be him storming into his house or his office and screaming at him like, you were my dad and you lied to me about this dog and blah blah blah blah blah. And there’s none of that. None of that happens.

Craig: Right. No. I mean, he does eventually get mad at him, but for a different reason. You’re right. That would make sense. But it’s at this point in the movie where he starts to change. After the whole needle in the arm thing, he told the doctors that he wasn’t going to take his medicine anymore. As it turns out, as we find out later, they’ve just been injecting him with placebo the whole time anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. But at this point, he starts to change. The wound from the needle starts to seem infected, and then it starts to progress. I guess before that, it’s important to say that he forgives Beth. Awfully quickly. Very quickly. But you know, that doesn’t even ring untrue to me. Like he reacted emotionally in the beginning. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything. And so it’s like he realizes that and he gets over it and he apologizes and they get back together. And then they have sex in his apartment. The sex scene wasn’t that bad, except for in the very beginning of it. She’s like straddling him, and they’re having sex. And I turn to my partner, I’m like, it’s always fascinating to me when women have sex with all their clothes on. I know that I’m not really experienced in that whole area, but that’s interesting to me. But wait, look, now she’s taking her top off. But anyway, they do it. It’s a very 80s, safe for network television sexy. Steamy, all of her

Todd: clothes on. They got the sheets completely wrapped around them and there’s some gauze in front of

Craig: him. As you do, you know.

Todd: Of course. Just like when you get out of bed, you make sure to wrap yourself in a sheet so your partner doesn’t see you naked. Right, exactly. In the morning.

Craig: You don’t want that. No, that’s just you. But anyway, so they are back together, they have sex or whatever, and then she sees his wound and she’s like, you should have that checked out. And so he goes back to the mean doctors and like, oh, it’s just an infection. But the point is, at this point, he starts to progress pretty quickly. This would be my only actual complaint. Overall, I really actually still think this movie is fine. I enjoy it. But the makeup effects, when he starts to change, I was not impressed by. Jeff Goldblum, the makeup effects with his gradual progression were so good. And this, like especially when he first starts, like, you know, eventually he turns into a great big giant fly and that looks cool but when it’s just kind of his face starting to change it looks to me like Halloween makeup or or stage makeup it looks very plasticky and prosthetic II and I don’t know I just wasn’t particularly impressed what Did you feel the same way or am I overreacting?

Todd: No, it really didn’t bother me too much. I thought it all kind of happened too quickly. Once again, This movie doesn’t take its time and quite frankly I’m glad it didn’t. It would have been really boring if it did. But 1 thing that was a hallmark of the original is just seeing that gradual change. It’s just more and more and more depressing. That’s just David Cronenberg. He loves this kind of stuff. Whereas this movie, it’s like he’s all seems fine. And then he looks down at his arm and it’s a little goopy. And then the next scene is he’s on his girlfriend’s houseboat, which I was like, oh, I didn’t know she lived on a houseboat. You know, suddenly he looks like half of his face looks like Frankenstein. I just thought, well, this is gonna go quickly. And I guess it does. I don’t know. I felt like there should have been some catalyst. I mean, it just turns out this is his destiny. This was always going to happen. They were prepared for this to happen, and eventually they just keep injecting him with nothing to make him think that his condition is being addressed. And then without any real catalyst, suddenly it goes from manageable to, oh my god, I’ve got half a day left.

Craig: Right. Well, and that’s the thing. He sees, OK, so he finds more videos, I guess. I don’t know if they were hidden from him before or whatever. But he sees the guy from the first movie, Stathis, you know, warning about these changes or whatever, and then he sees his dad in the evolution to the Brundlefly. And so he knows what’s going to be happening to him. And then Bartok comes and he confronts Bartok. You want this to happen?

Clip: Of course I want it to happen. You’re the pattern and the prototype for a whole new age of biological exploration. With you as the model and the telepath as the tool, Bartok industry will control the form and function of all life on earth.

Craig: Corporate greed, blah blah. It’s alien. Right, exactly, Exactly. But so he escapes and he goes and he finds his girlfriend and they’re on the run together and he’s continuing to evolve, devolve, whatever you want to call it. And he has this whole monologue at 1 point where it’s like he’s passed the point of no return and he has this monologue about how he’s actually getting better, like his senses are better. It’s all very spooky.

Todd: And it’s like the first 1 once again, but not as convincing, maybe just because it happens too quickly. But there’s this aspect to the first 1 where not only does Jeff Goldblum actually kind of get some superpowers But he’s also almost half delusional like this is a good thing It’s obvious that he’s falling apart But it’s almost like the way he copes with it is trying to convince himself that he’s not, that this is an improvement. And in this movie, he just kind of jumps straight to that half evil sounding, I have all these powers now and I am improving, and then pulls 1 of his eyes out or something to reveal the fly underneath and gets really sinister towards her.

Craig: Yes. And so she calls Bartok because she thinks they’re the only people that will know what to do. And obviously they’re the people, not that did this to him, but that have been fostering it or whatever but I understand her rationale like there’s nobody else who are you gonna call and so she calls them and they come and get him you know we kind of skipped over at this point he’s just like Jeff Goldblum did like he kind of turns into spider-man and he can jump on buildings and climb on walls and stuff. But they come to get him and by the time they get him back to the lab or shortly thereafter, he kind of goes into a cocoon again, which again, like, hello science, like flies don’t do cocoons. He’s not a butterfly, but whatever. But eventually he breaks out of the cocoon and he’s this huge fly. And I don’t know, you know, it had to be in part costume and part probably puppeteering and maybe part animatronics and like I said before they did a lot with Camera work so that you would only see its leg moving or you would only see its head moving but I found it to be very effective. It looks big, it looks menacing. I thought it was pretty scary. I thought it looked good.

Todd: Oh, it was a fantastic monster at this point. Yeah, I loved it. And again, at this point, it just became a monster movie for me. I think that was the letdown for me was, okay, now he’s this giant, no bones about it monster and it’s going to be alien in this research facility as he picks people off 1 at a time. And I, You know, I love to point these things out, but this, it’s just so funny, like how this Ms. Jane way is by herself in the lab monitoring this guy and he breaks out and all she can do is sit there and scream. I’m thinking This is like the loneliest, most understaffed advanced research facility in the whole world. They’ve got something of such significance and there seem to be like maybe 8 people in the whole building to deal with it. And it’s of course the 8 people we want to see die.

Craig: Yes, and you do. He kills both butthole doctors, which I appreciated. There’s also been this butthole security guard who’s been giving him crap the whole movie. I think he eventually kills him. Is he the guy that gets smashed in the elevator? I don’t remember. Somebody gets their head smashed in an elevator.

Todd: 1 guy gets his face melted off. He sprays his acid vomit on him. I was really quite surprised. I really wasn’t expecting this from this movie. I was expecting creepy creature effects. I was not expecting the in-your-face dwell on them extremely gory death sequences. I mean, some of the goriest stuff I’ve seen in a movie and it’s well done as well. So yeah, this guy’s head being crushed, the camera doesn’t cut away at all. It’s just here. Here’s a guy’s head being crushed for a few seconds. Here’s this guy’s face being melted off. And then after his face is melted off and he’s reached up and he’s peeled off half of it, he’s lying on the ground, and when they come in, he’s still alive, just sitting there gurgling. I’m like, oh my God. And you would think that would have the same emotional resonance as the dog, but no. The dog was worse.

Craig: No, no. Yeah, totally. Well, and that’s the thing, like you’re right, it does kind of become alien for a while, and it’s just him kind of running around killing people. And this is so silly, and maybe it’s just people like me who will appreciate things like this, but they highlight that Even though he has become physically this monster, at 1 point the guards sic a Rottweiler on him. I have a Rottweiler, she’s my big baby girl. And this dog runs up to this big monstrous thing and like is barking at it at first and then is like, oh shit. It’s a big monster. Maybe I should just chill out. And the big fly pets the dog. Like, and I know that that may seem so silly to some people, but to me, what that indicates is there is still humanity in him. You know, that part of him that was so moved and so connected to his little doggy friend is still in there somewhere. He’s not just a monster.

Todd: It’s a nice idea and that does come across, though I think it’s pretty clunkily handled. And also I like this moment where he comes up to her, where he comes up to Beth. Beth is kind of cornered. He walks up and they have like a look and then he walks away. Again, it just seemed, I don’t know. I mean, it’s like the scene that they had to have, you were expecting it. You can’t do the movie without it. But when it was done, I was kind of like, oh Like there I don’t know like there’s supposed to be some chemistry there. Maybe somebody should have said something When he walked away, I just thought man if I was Beth I’d be like, all right. Well, that’s that Yeah, I mean it was good while it lasted but looks like I’m gonna have to move on

Craig: Yeah, there was definitely more of an emotional connection between Gina Davis and Jeff Goldblum.

Todd: And He wasn’t 5.

Craig: Right, he wasn’t 5. But anyway, we left out at some point in the movie, 1 of the videos he’s watched, 1 of the last ones, he found out that the pods can cure him, but the only way they can do that is by extracting healthy DNA from somebody else and giving it to him and giving his bad DNA to somebody else which would kill them.

Todd: Yeah, the way he found that out was he just asked the computer, remember?

Craig: Yes! Like he’s like, okay Google! Can my DNA be replaced? Oh god, that was so funny. It was like he was at, like he invented Siri and like he was just… Siri, can my DNA be replaced?

Todd: You know, without these movies to record it, nobody really realizes how amazing our computers were back in the 80s. We really took several major steps back in just a couple decades, kids. You just need to know that. It was pretty funny.

Craig: But anyway, he figured that out. And that’s why initially when Beth is like, isn’t there anything you can do? He was like, no, because it would mean I would have to kill somebody else. Well, now they’re all, you know, cornered in the lab and it’s just him and her, Beth and Bartok. And Bartok, I feel like is holding her at gunpoint or something. And somehow he gets the advantage, Martin does, and he grabs Bartok and he drags him into the pod and he tells Beth.

Todd: First he drags him to the computer and gets his claw on his finger and makes him type the password on

Craig: the computer. The magic word.

Todd: Which was dad. Aww.

Craig: I know. Aww. Well, and like, that’s the thing. I actually kind of thought that was sad because Bartok was the guy that told him about the magic word So I’m guessing that when he chose that word he was thinking about Bartok as his dad.

Todd: Yeah And there’s also a moment earlier when he’s confronting Bartok, which you already went through, but he has this line where he looks at him and goes, I loved you. And then he stormed out, which wasn’t the best delivered line. But again, they’re trying to hammer this home, but it’s just so clunkily handled. And once again, we haven’t really had much time to see the relationship between these 2. It’s really hard to believe that Bartok’s interactions with this kid was nothing more than every couple of months popping out of his office ducking his head in and saying hello. You know, we still throughout the movie don’t get an indication there’s much more between them than this. So if it’s this really sad situation that he, even despite this, had these strong, affectionate feelings for Bartok, it just does not come through.

Craig: Agreed. Agreed. But, you know, I think that that bothered me less just because he had nobody so even the most tenuous Relationship would be something that he would cling to because he had nobody except for the butthole doctors That’s true and and Bartok anyway, whatever it doesn’t matter he He drags Bartok in and he indicates, because the fly doesn’t talk, he indicates to her, to Beth, to hit enter, which is All you have to do to start the sequence. It starts the sequence and they transport and you see this monstrous, gross Frankenstein slimy thing pop out, but then Martin walks out and he’s fine and Bartok is now this hideous monster thing. So it’s the happy ending. And then the most satisfying part of the movie to me, and it’s cruel, it’s horrible, It makes me a horrible person for feeling this way. It ends with a shot of Bartok now in that gross pit cage that the dog was in before and somebody feeding it the slop. I shouldn’t wish that on anybody, but he was really mean and I’m glad that he got what was coming to him.

Todd: But he was mean to that dog, damn it.

Craig: He was. I hope that he has to stay in there for 2 years before somebody puts him out of his misery.

Todd: Yeah, I was not expecting a happy ending to this movie. I thought, you know, the guy’s transformed into a fly, what more can be done? But yeah, it’s genetics, right? So we can fix all that.

Craig: I guess that there was a sequel to the actual original, The Fly. I don’t remember what it was called but I guess that they gave it a happy ending too so yeah sort of this is kind of in keeping this is kind of in keeping with that I guess but

Todd: that 1 was ridiculous by the way

Craig: oh I haven’t seen it I haven’t seen and I feel bad I definitely need to see the Vincent Price 1. But, you know, when all is said and done, my memories of this movie were fonder than maybe they deserve to be. It’s not great. Honestly though, I think that if it weren’t a sequel, that if it were just a standalone movie on its own, I would have thought, you know, this is a pretty good 80s monster movie.

Todd: I like keeping in mind 80s.

Craig: Yeah, right. Compared to the original. No, it’s not as good. The original is better, but I still liked it. I was entertained and I liked the characters. I, you know, the ones that you’re supposed to like. I thought Eric Stoltz did a good job and Daphne’s Inigo was serviceable as the sweet, you know, romantic pairing or whatever. It wasn’t perfect And there was certainly some hammy acting especially in the final act, but I think it’s a fun movie. I like it

Todd: I think I’ve said about everything I could say about it. I agree with you It’s a fun movie and if it weren’t a sequel to this I probably would have received it a lot better again considering it’s a movie from the 80s so you have to forgive some of these tropes.

Craig: Yeah, yeah.

Todd: Things that are pretty typical about the movie, the rushed romance, you know, the ridiculous science, and even some of the hammy acting, you know, is forgivable. At the end of the day, as a sequel to The Fly, it just really let me down. I just thought there were so many interesting places They could go with it, and it just turned out they just wanted a big monster movie and so even the first Three-quarters of the movie even though they were rushed through could have been almost faster,

Craig: maybe

Todd: You know But that bit with the dog in there killed me. So that took some skill.

Craig: Yeah. Well, I mean, it is what it is. And that’s, you know, it’s always hit or miss with sequels. And as far as sequels go, they’re hardly ever as good as the first 1. No. There, you know, there’s the rare exception where they’re as good or sometimes even better. But In terms of sequels, I think that it is a serviceable sequel. I’m glad that we got to see Jeff Goldblum again. The guy that played Stathis, it really felt like they just kind of stuck him in there because he was in the first movie.

Todd: He did

Craig: nothing. He didn’t have much to do. It at least honored the first movie, you know, like it acknowledged and appreciated the first movie and I liked that. It’s not amazing. It certainly didn’t win any awards nor would it ever but if you’re a fan of the fly and or if you’re a fan of 80s movies which I totally am I’d say check it out

Todd: it’s not a waste of your time and it’s

Craig: 1 of those 5 writers on the film was Frank Darabond.

Todd: Yeah!

Craig: Who went on to do even bigger and bigger things. He’s got, you know, this guy’s got his fingerprints in a lot of really interesting movies throughout the years.

Todd: Correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t he do like Shawshank? Green Mile.

Craig: He’s a writer, kind of 1 of the show creators of The Walking Dead, and he did The Mist, and oh yeah, he’s had his hands all over a lot of stuff. He did the screenplay for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Did you know that? No. Yeah, so anyway. Yeah, again, There were some talented people working on this film, and I think the special effects were quite good as well. Much better than a lot of 80s special effects.

Todd: So oh, definitely, definitely. And practical. And you know, if you listen to this podcast at all, you know that we’re big fans of Practical Effects. Mmm. And they were, they were good. Well, we are going to be back with you for the next couple of weeks with a couple of more sequels. We’ve got some interesting ones planned, so I hope that you will tune in for those. If you enjoyed this episode, or if you didn’t, I suppose, you can drop us a comment on our Facebook page or our website, which I will let Todd give, because I can never remember how it goes.

Craig: 2 guys dot red40net dot com. We really ought to change that.

Todd: But I’m too cheap. You remember it. Anyway, let us know what you think of this movie. If you have fond or not so fond memories of it. Or just engage with us in conversation about whatever you would like to talk about. We really do love to hear from you and we try to get back to everybody who contacts us so drop us a line. We’ll be back with you