Thanks to ‘The Fly’ For Ruining My Childhood
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Dylan Stuckey
It’s mid-December 1987, and I’m about to experience one of the worst nights of my young life.
I’m five years old, sitting in a warm farmhouse at a Christmas party hosted by my parents’ friends. In the corner, a flickering Zenith TV is playing a movie I’ve never seen. I’m intrigued. On the screen a tall man with black hair walks into a bar. He chats with a woman, yada yada yada, and soon he’s arm-wrestling a sweaty trucker-looking guy. As they lock hands in this contest of strength, something starts to change. The man with black hair begins to look... grotesque. Boil-like sores form on his face as he licks his lips and digs in to apply more force. As the tension rises, the trucker writhes in pain. White ooze forms between their hands, and suddenly, the man with black hair snaps the trucker’s arm in half so fiercely that bone bursts through the skin.
I’m still five years old. I’m still watching this. And now, I’m horrified.
As the movie unfolds, it becomes clear that the man with black hair is Dr. Seth Brundle, also known as Brundle Fly, played by the one and only Jeff Goldblum. This is the moment when I meet the creature that would haunt my waking dreams for years to come.
Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum in David Cronenberg's The Fly.
David Cronenberg’s The Fly is a classic of 1980s body horror. Long before Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore were swapping skins in The Substance, David Cronenberg was making a name for himself as the enfant terrible of Canadian body transformation. The Fly may just be his fingernail-pulling, teeth-falling-out, acid-regurgitating masterpiece. The story follows Brundle as he accidentally fuses his DNA with a fly’s while experimenting with a teleportation machine he built. What follows is pure horror, as we watch Brundle’s transformation into a grotesque, humanoid fly.
Now, let’s be honest—does this sound like the right movie to ease the mind of a five year old? Absolutely not.
The true hallmark of a great horror film is its lasting impact. In that sense The Fly is a Grade-A piece of B-movie heaven. From age five to my mid-twenties, when I finally rewatched the movie, I harbored an irrational fear of transformations. The Incredible Hulk? Nope, I wasn’t watching that. Large Marge from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Count me out. The scene in The Witches when Anjelica Huston peels off her mask? No, thank you. I didn’t revisit The Fly until I was about 25—long enough to think I could handle whatever horrors were still lurking in ol’ Brundle Fly’s lab.
Cronenberg built a career out of turning our stomachs while simultaneously framing his pulpy genre films with sharp social commentary. The Fly is just as horrifying today as it was in 1987. With the benefit of hindsight, the themes of personal and social transformation the film explores cut even deeper in 2024 than they did the day it was released. There’s nothing quite like a good scare, but it’s the fears that stay with you and make you examine why they linger that carry the most weight.
In that sense, I should say thank you, David Cronenberg—you made me face what I feared most: the transformational power of taking space as the person you are destined to be.
Dylan Stuckey is a lifelong lover of cinema, photography, and the arts. You can find him on Letterboxd @dylanstuckey and on Instagram @dylanstuckeyphotography.