The Fly II DVD Review

Written by Daniel Hirshleifer

DVD Released by Fox Home Entertainment

Directed by Chris Walas

Written by Mick Garris, Jim Wheat & Ken Wheat, and Frank Darabont
1989, Region 1 (NTSC), 104 minutes, Rated R

DVD released on October 4th, 2005

Starring:
Eric Stoltz as Martin Brundle
Daphne Zuniga as Beth Logan
Lee Richardson as Anton Bartok
John Getz as Stathis Borans

Review:

As soon as David Cronenberg’s 1986 film The Fly became a hit, a sequel became inevitable. Fox turned to the man behind the first film’s Oscar-winning special effects, Chris Walas, to direct. Walas, who had grown up on the sci-fi and horror films of the '50s, was determined to make an old-fashioned monster movie. And that’s exactly what we get with The Fly II.

Eric Stoltz stars as Martin Brundle, the son of Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis, played briefly in this film by a look-alike). As the opening scenes show us, Martin is not an ordinary child. He is, in fact, born in an egg, from which a human baby emerges. And there are other signs he isn’t human, either. He ages astonishingly fast. In just a few months, he has the body of an 11-year old. But mentally, he goes even further, as he turns out to be a genius.

Martin lives in an observation room in Bartok Industries. If you recall, Bartok is mentioned twice in the original film as the company funding Seth’s work. Here, the company takes center stage. Anton Bartok (Lee Richardson), the company’s founder, acts as Martin’s surrogate father. And he does in fact appear kindly. However, darker intentions present themselves when Martin finds a way to escape his room. He finds a dog in a cage in a lab, and befriends him. One day, Martin goes to see the dog, only to find his cage empty, and a note on it that says, “Transfer to Bay 17.” Martin makes his way to Bay 17, only to find the dog being transported through the telepods Seth created in the first film. The dog survives the teleportation, but is horribly deformed.

Cut to a few years later, and we see Martin is now a full-grown man. But we discover that he is in fact only five years old. At this point, Bartok provides him with his own apartment and reintroduces him to the telepods. He apologizes for the incident with the dog, and asks Martin if he would be willing to finish his father’s work. Martin agrees, and in the course of his work, meets Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga, included at producer Mel Brooks’ insistence), and falls for her. This turn of events upsets Bartok, so he has Beth reassigned. When Martin tries to go after her, he learns more about his background and heritage than he ever knew before. And this information sparks a disturbing metamorphosis…

As a sequel to The Fly, The Fly II is lacking. Other than Martin, it has no strong characterizations. The relationships, especially Martin and Beth’s, feel forced. And the science is not as convincing as in Cronenberg’s film. However, taken as an homage to cheesy old time monster movies, the film is actually far more successful. It has everything a good monster movie needs: an evil enemy (in this case, the Bartok corporation), a beautiful damsel who steals the monsters heart, and a sympathetic but dangerous monster.

Easily the most impressive feature of the film is the new Brundlefly. If not as disturbing as Seth’s transformation, Martin’s looks a hell of a lot cooler. And the final monster is about as sophisticated and imposing as any motion-controlled character can be. Another big achievement is that the film gives the monster all the humanity that Stoltz put into Martin before the metamorphosis. The monster scenes are visceral and a real joy for gore hounds. If Seth would disintegrate hands and feet, Martin disintegrates whole heads.

The other high point of the film is Eric Stoltz’s portrayal of Martin. Stoltz is sufficiently earnest enough to convey the idea that this is a young child in a big man’s body. He’s gleeful and throws himself headlong into the character. He also effectively acts as if he could be a boy genius. And once his transformation begins and he learns of Bartok’s true intentions, he does a good job of showing his disillusionment. Stoltz would do better work than this, but this performance shows that he always had talent.

The rest of the film is merely acceptable. The opening alone strays so far from Cronenberg’s vision that it becomes clear the best way to view this is as an entirely separate entity. This is further illustrated when we get to the opening titles, where, instead of Howard Shore’s impressive and memorable theme, we get Christopher Young doing a rewrite of his own theme for Hellraiser. Where the original film attempted to mix the gothic with science, this film abandons all pretense of mood, putting Martin in sterile, white, boring environments. And Bartok himself is the ultimate affront to the last film. Where every character in The Fly had excellent motivations at all times, Bartok is just a generic evil corporate bad guy. At one point he even says he plans to use the telepods to control the form of all life on earth.

But at the same time, the context of this film is totally different. Walas made no attempt to mimic Cronenberg, and so the mediocre aspects of the film become campy, and therefore, fun. It’s pretty clear Walas wanted to make a monster movie, and not the kind of multi-layered production Cronenberg created. So, yes, Bartok’s declaration of ultimate evil still elicits laughter, but by that point in the film, you’re almost expecting it.

If you go into The Fly II expecting a true sequel to The Fly, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Go in expecting a cheesy monster flick, and you might just have some fun.

Video and Audio:

As I did on The Fly, I compared this new set and the old double feature disc. This time, the differences aren’t as obvious. This new transfer has less grain, better color definition, and less dirt on the print. The picture is pretty sharp, and some of those lab scenes do look quite good. The darker scenes don’t fare as well, with some details getting lost in shadow. Overall, it’s better than the last edition, and not so bad in its own right.

The Fly II is available in DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish 2.0 and French stereo (it’s not even listed as Dolby on the DVD). As I noticed with The Fly, the Dolby 5.1 mix is louder, with more pounding bass. The DTS has a little more depth of field, with more resonance and detail. Both sound excellent, and the Dolby 5.1 is a cut above the 5.1 mix on the old double feature disc.

Special Features:

The Fly II is a two-disc set, which is probably more than this movie deserves. But what’s here isn’t fluff. On disc one, there’s a commentary by director Chris Walas and historian/archivist Bob Burns. Thank goodness for Bob Burns, as he is the saving grace on this track. Walas is actually quite interesting on the documentaries, but for some reason, on the commentary, it seems as if he’s at a loss for words, so he points out the most mundane details. Even with Burns around, the track starts out at a plodding pace, with the two of them discussing points about the film that were said more concisely in the accompanying documentaries. But eventually, the conversation moves away from this particular film, and moves toward film in general, especially the kinds of films that inspired The Fly II. From there it really picks up, with Walas and Burns cracking jokes and being both funny and informative.

Also on the first disc are a deleted scene and an alternate ending. The deleted scene is humorous, but wouldn’t have fit with the mood at that point in the film. And the alternate ending is boring, pointless, and nowhere near as good as the current ending. This disc also has trailers. Bizarrely, no trailers for The Fly II appear. Instead, we get trailers for The Fly (1958), The Fly (1986), Return of the Fly, Alien, and The Omen. There’s also the “If you liked this movie, you may want to try…” section, which has the covers and short synopses for all the Alien and Predator movies.

Disc two has the bulk of the special features. The biggest of which is the new documentary, “Transformations: Looking Back At The Fly II.” This mostly consists of interviews with Chris Walas, although a few other contributors pop up. Unlike the beginning of the commentary, Walas is informative and interesting throughout. It’s not as thorough as the documentary for the first film, but The Fly II isn’t as accomplished or important, so it doesn’t feel as if we’re being shortchanged. A second documentary, “’The Fly’ Papers: The Buzz On Hollywood’s Biggest Insect” is an hour-long documentary on all the films that originally aired on AMC. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Leonard Nimoy does the narration. The documentary spends almost equal time on all the films. And to my surprise, I discovered there were actually two sequels to the original. The Curse of The Fly, which appeared in the '60s, had almost nothing to do with the first two films, but had some bizarre imagery nonetheless.

There are three featurettes. The first is the 1989 electronic press kit. Like the EPK on The Fly, for some reason the narrator was mixed so low as to be inaudible. Also, like the EPK on The Fly, this EPK doesn’t do anything that the other features don’t do better. The second featurette is the CWI video production journal. This consists of test footage of the various effects, and is easily the most interesting of the featurettes. The third is called “Composer’s Master Class: Christopher Young.” Here Young speaks about working with Walas (Walas told him to forget Shore’s score entirely, and make something that was his own), and how the music evolved. It’s all kind of funny, since most of the music is nothing but a weak rewrite of the Hellraiser score. I almost wish Young would have just said, “I needed a paycheck and so I rearranged some stuff I had already made.”

The disc has three storyboard-to-film comparisons. I never found these comparisons to be very interesting, and the ones presented here are no exception. However, these come with optional commentary by Chris Walas, which make the proceedings a touch more interesting. After these, we finally get a teaser and full trailer for the movie itself, although you’d think they would have included these on the first disc.

To round it out, we get still picture galleries. Gallery one is production photos, gallery two is models and casts for the effects, and gallery three is storyboards. Of the three, the second is by far the most interesting, as you get to see a lot of those cool effects close-up, where you can study them.

Grades:

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Video:
Audio:
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Conclusion:

The Fly was such a hard act to follow that it is to Chris Walas’ credit that he doesn’t simply try to recreate it with The Fly II. However, it’s also to his detriment, as the movie will inevitably be compared to the first and found lacking. But Walas’ intention was to create a campy monster movie, and on that level, The Fly II works well. It’s more suited to genre aficionados than fans of the first film. If you keep in mind that the title Walas wanted for the film was Son of The Fly, then you’d have a better idea of where this movie is coming from. And for a cheesy monster flick, it’s not so bad. I wouldn’t recommend buying it unless you find it in a bargain bin, but it could be worth a rental, especially with the superior presentation and wealth of extras in this new edition.

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