10 Most Ingenious Special FX In Horror Movie History

Be Afraid. Be very afraid. The David Cronenberg 1987 remake of the Vincent Price classic sci-fi/horror movie certainly lives up to the tagline. It's a disturbing and graphic film, even by today's standards. In a 1987 interview, Price revealed that Goldblum sent him a letter, hoping for his approval. Price replied, saying "I thought it was wonderful, right up to a certain point... it went a little too far." An understatement? Perhaps.

As Seth Brundle (Goldblum) begins to transform, his own DNA now mixed with a fly in an experiment gone awry, Cronenberg takes a duel approach to the metamorphosis, physically and mentally, culminating in a tragic and terrifying story.

To convey the horror of Brundle's physical evolution, special FX master Chris Walas was hired and didn't disappoint. With credits including Toht's melting face from Raiders Of The Lost Ark and the creature design for Gremlins, Walas created what was to become the major pitch of the film. The original's approach was a more simple transformation from human to fly, yet Cronenberg wanted to visualise something more like the spread of cancer or old age. The finished result was a gruesome, monstrous amalgamation of the two, not switched, but combined.

The last act depicts Brundle's final iteration, an enormous, bipedal creature of immense strength and ferocity, oozing with... whatever a human/fly hybrid oozes. The Fly still stands as a testament to the effectiveness of practical effects over CGI, with unsettling results.