THE FLY (1958) C widescreen 94m dir: Kurt Neumann

w/David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall, Kathleen Freeman, Betty Lou Gerson

From Variety's contemporary review of the film: "The Fly is a high-budget, beautifully and expensively mounted exploitation picture [derived from a story by George Langelaan]. Al Hedison plays a scientist who has invented a machine that reduces matter to disintegrated atoms and another machine that reassembles the atoms. He explains to his wife (Patricia Owens) that this will enable humans to travel --- disintegrated --- anywhere in the world at the speed of light. In experimenting with himself, however, a fly gets into the disintegration chamber with him.

"When Hedison arrives in the integration chamber, he discovers some of his atoms have been scrambled with the fly's. Hedison has the head and 'arm' of a fly; the fly has the head and arm of the man --- each, of course, in his own scale of size. The problem is to catch the fly and rescramble. But before this can happen, Hedison finds the predatory instincts of the insect taking over.

"One strong factor of the picture is its unusual believability. It is told as a mystery suspense story, so that it has a compelling interest aside from its macabre effects. There is an appealing and poignant romance between Owens and Hedison, which adds to the reality of the story, although the flashback technique purposely robs the picture of any doubt about the outcome."

Quote from the white-headed fly in the scene where it's caught in the spider's web: "Help me! Help me!"