note: I put both of the 1980's Fly movies on the same page to compare the two. I  watched the 2005 released special edition DVDs.

The Fly (1986)  Jeff Goldblum tries to impress a girl and becomes a hideously deformed mutant. Story of my life.  David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly is a really enjoyable movie. You pretty much get all of the stuff you expect from him. Deformed flesh, blood, sex and violence.  Though there's a  love story and a bit of comedy as well.    Seth Brundle (Goldblum) merges with a fly in a teleportation experiment. It's actually a gradual process, you see his body deteriorate as he slowly turns into a monster and lose his mind. The thing about it is, you actually really care about the monster, as well as pretty much every character in the movie. There's not a high body count but there's plenty of great gross out moments. It's got the classic Cronenberg ending, which is a good thing, since the alternate ending is absolute crap.  You can find that in the special features.  The movie has great makeup, and it's in a time before CGI, even though some stuff is obviously fake it still has a certain bit of reality to it that you just don't get in movies nowadays. There a re a few points in the movie that kind of drag on, but over all it's a pretty awesome movie. 4 out of 5 skulls

The Fly II   The sequel picks up right away as Martin Brundle is born, his growth is accelerated much like a fly. He's been raised in a laboratory and is pretty much a huge experiment. He thought he was given vaccines to keep him human, the scientists were just waiting for him to transform into a fly. There's a pretty blatant message against animal testing as you see some of the experiments suffering.    This movie isn't as artistic as the first, but it's got plenty of puppets and blood. There were quite a few moments that reminded  me of Dead Alive, or Braindead if you want to be a snob about it.  Decent acting, above average child acting, awesome creature effects and very little downtime. Although the movie is longer than The Fly ,it seems shorter. You don't really care so much as he starts to lose his human form, he didn't really seem to suffer as much as Seth Brundle. Then again, this doesn't many dramatic elements to it, you pretty much shut your mind off, watch the gore, feel bad when animals get hurt, and go "Awww!" when the transformed Brundle pets the attack dog.   I'd recommend it to any fan of the first one, or fans of muppet horror. 4 out of 5 skulls

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