DAVID CRONENBERG'S THE FLY
1986 Release And Reaction
 ARTICLE By E.C. McMullen Jr. |
Upon its theatrical release, a movie is expected to have Income cashflow, not Outgoing cashflow.
This movie, however, was a far larger hit than the studio anticipated. It wasn't just making unexpected bank, it was tapping into its era's zeitgeist, it got people talking and writing and all of the hours and pages of free Public Relations pointed in a direction 20th Century Fox didn't expect. And because they didn't expect such a reaction, they never anticipated it: meaning they didn't market the movie in that direction. This is the story of how a summer time blockbuster hit like David Cronenberg's 1986 THE FLY, goaded a studio into spending more money beyond the budget after its release.
David Cronenberg made a low budget Canadian Horror movie called SHIVERS, and it was a surprise hit. He followed that with RABID and it too, was a surprise hit. When he made the low budget THE BROOD and then SCANNERS he was able to step up with Internationally recognized actors.
Oh, and they were hits.
The Canadian Film Board at that time could be fickle and if you didn't make your movies their way, you could do worse than not get a commercial release, you could go to prison. Like so many talented Canadians, David was ready to make a run for the border. He directed two Hollywood movies released in 1983, VIDEODROME and THE DEAD ZONE. Big time actors, bigger budgets, and they were both hits.
You see where this is going, right? At that point David gets whatever he wants and he wanted to make a movie even gorier than what had come before. He also admired John Carpenter's THE THING and wanted to do his own "Re-imagining" of an old 1950s classic: in this case, THE FLY.
Of course, David felt he had to outdo Carpenter's blood & guts factor on THE THING, and when the 20th Century Fox studio suits saw the final cut they were aghast. Why? Because it wasn't just gore: It was Horrific Gore! It had that terrifying sense of loss. That emotional gut punch.
After seeing it, Horror icon Vincent Price himself benevolently opined,
"...it went a little too far."
Understand that, coming from of all people, Vincent Price, that may have been a compliment.
Something else happened too.
This was a movie chiefly made for young male gore hounds - David's presumed audience. But at test screenings of the movie it performed remarkably well with women.
Wait! What? Why?
Women somehow saw it as a tear-jerking tragic love story, which flummoxed the prevailing wisdom of the largely all male studio heads. Fox wasn't certain what they had but the press was already turning Gawky Geeky Goldblum into a Sex Symbol and the suits weren't going to let the money get away.
They didn't dare re-edit it, of course. 20th Century Fox had no idea what was making it work. So instead they threw a big pile of advertising & marketing dollars at it to reset their PR campaign toward a female audience.
However, that was already after many of us Horror fans saw David Cronenberg's 1986 THE FLY!
This review copyright 2000 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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