Gem: The Fly
The Fly serves as a warning to couples: if you morph into an insect, chances are your relationship is doomed. With cinema content to pair up vampires, werewolves and blow-up dolls with humans, David Cronenberg’s body horror smudges that boundary. Until you want to be sick. Looking back on the 1986 film now it clearly stands as rhetoric for the AIDS epidemic, and the harsh realities couples deal with as they are faced with a fatal, degrading prognosis. The Fly ’s romance between Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife is staggering for the plain fact that it persists throughout an entire feature.
What marks Seth and Veronica as one of cinema’s strangest couples is the underlying normality reflected in the grotesque events which they succumb to. One drunken night Seth decides to test his teleportation device with himself as the subject. An unknowing fly enters the pod with him and so begins his change into a fly. The oddity here is physically witnessed in his subsequent transformation, yet the strange stems from his human nature. In a jealous flit he endangers himself and his relationship. This chain of events begins out of typical human misunderstanding: he believes his girlfriend is cheating, when in fact she has ventured out to seek closure from her ex.
But what of Veronica’s behaviour? She’s equally as mad! As she learns of Seth’s predicament she continues to be drawn to him, more so even after he has bridged the gap between human and fly. She is an assured, strong woman who continues to date a man whose fridge has been renamed the Brundlefly museum. Never in film has a more bizarre tryst existed, wherein an innocent hunt in the fridge for last night’s pad thai, leaves one partner uncovering the other’s necrotic genitals.
Your typical swooning conversation between lovers is traded for body-horror politic, as Brundle exclaims to Veronica: “Drink deep, or taste not, the plasma spring! Y’see what I’m saying? And I’m not just talking about sex and penetration. I’m talking about penetration beyond the veil of the flesh! A deep penetrating dive into the plasma pool!” Now that’s the sort of chatter you want on a long walk along a beach.
The couple persevere through normal, “everyday” behaviour while simultaneously engaging in vile acts. After a jump in the sack, Veronica plucks a bit of circuitry out of Seth’s back – and later while he eats a carton of ice cream, she clips hair thick as pipe cleaners from his shoulders. As Seth nears his complete transformation, he becomes stronger and more confident and therefore: more attractive to Veronica. It’s all well and good that now he can jump into the rafters to clean out those pesky spider webs but that keen athletic ability only confirms his fate. During the film’s final reel, Veronica, while still hopelessly in love with Seth, has to defend herself and her mutant pregnancy from the ultimate proposition.
Madder than a bag full of bipolar badgers, Seth attempts to really go all out for their last consummation. To unite himself, Veronica and the baby he deems that the only way to save their failed relationship is for the three of them to go into the teleportation pod together. You know, to be forged as one. Now, there’s commitment and then there’s restraining orders. This proposal romps carefree into the realm of the latter.
Veronica’s final comment on her man-fly boyfriend’s indecent proposal? Well, there’s only one option really isn’t there?
She blows his head off with a shotgun.
Who said romance is dead?
The arguments have been made! Now it’s your turn, head to the comments section and weigh-in on which relationship you find the most messed up.
And if you enjoyed our arguments, perhaps you’re interested in some of our past ones, such as:
Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. Mark Wahlberg
Not So Classic Fairy Tale Adaptations
Twilight Battle! Team Edward Vs Team Jacob
Battle Brad Pitt! Aniston Vs Jolie
Battle Batman! Bane’s Plan Vs The Joker’s Plan
Lord Of The Rings Battle! Who Is The Fiercest Fighter In All Of Middle Earth?
