Cinema: Love in the Animal Kingdom the Fly

Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy is transformed into humongous, repulsive fly-human. Girl gets pregnant.

Or how about this one? Duck from outer space meets girl. Duck and girl become best friends. Duck saves earth.

Either some Hollywood Mr. Big decided that love stories needed a little interspecies spice, or they’re snorting talcum powder at story conferences. No other explanation will suffice for the appearance of these two new comedy- fantasy thrillers. As it happens, both films have popular, if not honorable, antecedents. The Fly is a free, gory and engaging remake of the 1958 sci-fi horror movie, directed by Kurt Neumann, about a scientist who tampers with nature and switches heads with a housefly. Howard the Duck is a bestial bloviation of Steve Gerber’s Marvel comic books of the ’70s. The first film expands and enriches its schlock source; the second turns a wiseacre mallard into a $40 million promotion for stuffed Howards.

But don’t bet that many kids will want to buy this duck. The movie is too scuzzy to beguile children, too infantile to appeal to adults. Its humor is sub-Mad: Howard (played by Actor Ed Gale, and some other small people, in a duck suit, with Chip Zien providing the voice) is a master of “quack fu” who reads Rolling Egg and DQ magazines. He grows angry: “No more Mr. Nice Duck.” He waxes philosophic: “No duck is an island.” When the filmmakers grow tired of fowl puns — about an hour after the audience does — they switch to space opera, and Howard battles a scientist (Jeffrey Jones, funny against all odds) whose body is invaded by a giant lobster-scorpion space troll. Moviegoers who are in search of a porno Zoo Parade may enjoy the bedroom tryst in which Howard’s human sweetie (Lea Thompson) discovers a condom in his wallet, snuggles up and asks, “You think I might find love in the animal kingdom?” More fastidious viewers are advised to purchase a Daffy Duck videocassette.

Now for the good news: a gross-your-eyes-out horror movie that is also the year’s most poignant romance. Its scientist hero, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), is a kind of genius mutant. His mature brain percolates tomorrow’s ideas, but his heart is as fragile as that of a child in a plastic bubble. He knows it too. “I don’t have a life, so there’s nothing for you to interfere with,” he genially tells Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a journalist planning a story on his research into teleportation. She gives him a life — hers — and their tender affair seems to vitalize him. His experiments proceed triumphantly: a woman’s stocking, a steak, a baboon, all shazammed from one telepod machine to another. He proves to be an ardent lover, with amazing powers of recuperation. He impulsively performs gymnastic arabesques worthy of Kurt Thomas. It is as if his discovering the power of sexual love has electrified every circuit in his mind and body. Or could it have something to do with the night he placed himself in the telepod and a fly sneaked in with him?

Oops! The two life forms have fused. “I’m the offspring of Brundle and housefly,” he notes ruefully. “I’m becoming Brundlefly!” And as his grotesque flyness asserts itself, his humanity struggles to understand and fight the metamorphosis. What remains of Seth the scientist is all too aware of the monster he is turning into: an efficient killer with “no compassion, no compromise.” At times he can be wildly ironic, as when he meticulously preserves in his bathroom the teeth, fingernails and ear that have molted, and then jokes that “the medicine cabinet’s now the Brundle Museum of Natural History.” At other moments he can lurch from irony to insanity to Kafkaesque insight. “I’m an insect who dreamed he was a man, and loved it.” “Help me,” he tells Veronica. “Help me be human.” Alas, she has her own problem. She is pregnant — but with Seth’s child or Brundlefly’s?

Director Cronenberg (The Brood, The Dead Zone) tells this story with no compromise but plenty of intelligent compassion. In the film’s first half, the edgy romantic comedy is beguiling, especially as played by Goldblum and Davis, two deft charmers who inhabit their roles as if they have comfortably lived there forever. The Faustian tragedy of the second half is underscored by some revolting and riveting special effects. Watch closely for Brundlefly’s agile wall climbing. Close your eyes during the hallucinatory sequence in which Cronenberg, as an obstetrician, helps Veronica give birth to a 20-in.-long bouncing baby maggot. And be alerted that this insect consumes food by spewing formic acid on its prey; it makes for a very messy lunch.

There is a method to Cronenberg’s shock tactics. Whereas Howard the Duck is an effects festival attached to a smirk, The Fly is smart and serious about its characters. Seth and Veronica could be any two people falling in love, eager for adventure but anxious about the changes and dark revelations that come with learning how little they know about their lovers. That nice guy lying next to you in bed, breathing in your rhythm, smiling in his sleep — what demons sleep within him? And why does his snore sound like a gentle bzzzzz?