The Fly (George Langelaan)

"The Fly" is a short story by George Langelaan that was published in the June 1957 issue of Playboy magazine.^[1] It was first filmed in 1958, and then again in 1986. An opera of the same name by Howard Shore premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in 2008.

The short story "The Fly" is included in Langelaan's short story collection Out of Time (1964).

Plot summary

The story begins late at night when François Delambre is awakened by the telephone. On the other end of the line is his sister-in-law Helene who tells him that she has just killed his brother and that he should call the police. He does and they find the mangled remains of his brother in the family factory, his head and arm crushed under a hydraulic machine press.

Helene seems surprisingly calm throughout the investigation, willing to answer all questions except one: she will not give the reason for killing him. Eventually she is sent to a mental asylum and François is given custody of his brother's young son, Henri. François goes to visit her often, but she never provides the explanation for the question that he most desperately wants to know. Then one day she inquires how long a housefly's life span is. Later that evening, he hears Henri mention something about a fly with a funny white head. Realizing that this might somehow hold a clue to the murder, François confronts her with the news that Henri spotted a strange fly, and Helene becomes extremely agitated at this news. François threatens to go to the police and give them the information about the insect if she does not tell him what he wants to know. She relents and advises him to come back the next day, at which time he will receive his explanation. The next day she gives him a handwritten manuscript, and later that night he reads it.

His brother, André Delambre, was a brilliant research scientist who had just found an amazing discovery. Using machines that he called disintegrator-reintegrators, André could instantaneously transfer matter from one location to another through space. He had two such machines in his basement, one being used as a transmitter pod, the other as a receiver. Helene's manuscript reveals that at first André encountered several flukes, including an experiment in which he transmitted an ashtray that reintegrated in the receiver pod with the words "Made in Japan" on the back written backwards. He also tried transmitting the family cat, which disintegrated perfectly but then never reappeared. Eventually, however, he ironed out the mistakes and found that the invention worked perfectly. Then one day André tried the experiment on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a tiny housefly had entered the transmitter pod with him, and when he emerged from the receiver, his head and arm had been switched with that of the insect.

André tells Helene that his only hope of salvation is for her to find the fly so that he can transmit himself with it again in the hopes of regaining his missing atoms. A search of the house proves fruitless, and in desperation Helene begs him to go through once more in the hopes that the transformation might reverse itself. Not believing it will work, but wanting to humor her, he agrees and goes through. When he steps out of the receiver Helene excitedly pulls off the cloth sack that he has been covering his head with, and she is greeted with a truly horrifying sight. Not only is his head now that of a fly, but some of the missing particles from the family cat were also mixed in with his scrambled anatomy during the last experiment. Now realizing that he has been transformed beyond all hope, André destroys the pods and all of the work in his lab and devises a way to commit suicide while at the same time hiding from the world what he had become. He shows Helene how to operate the hydraulic press and then places himself under it. Obeying his last wish, Helene pushes the button to lower the press and kills her husband.

François goes to see Helene the next day but receives heartbreaking news. Unable to live with her memories, she committed suicide during the night. Later that evening François invites Inspector Charas, the policeman in charge of the case, over to his house for dinner. After finishing their meal, François allows him to read Helene's manuscript. After reading it, Charas declares that Helene must have been mad, and they both decide to destroy the "confession." But just as the story ends, François tells Charas that earlier that day he buried a fly at his brother's graveside. It was a fly with a white head and arm.

Adaptations

Screen adaptations

The following movies were based on this short story:^[2]

• The Fly is a 1958 film which started David Hedison as Andre Delambre, Patricia Owens as Helene Delambre, and Vincent Price as François Delambre.
• Return of the Fly is a 1959 film which is the first sequel to the 1958 film. While Vincent Price reprises his role of François Delambre, Brett Halsey stars as Andre Delambre's son Phillipe Delambre.
• Curse of the Fly is a 1965 film (the second and final sequel to the 1958 film) which stars George Baker as Martin Delambre, Brian Donlevy as Henry Delambre, and Carole Gray as Patricia Stanley.
• The Fly is the 1986 remake of the 1958 film which stars Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle (who fills the same role as Andre Delambre), Geena Davis as Veronica Quaife, and John Getz as Stathis Borans.
• The Fly II is the 1989 sequel to the 1986 film. While John Getz was the only one to reprise his role from the first film, Eric Stoltz stars as Martin Brundle (the son of Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife) with the supporting cast consisting of Daphne Zuniga as Beth Logan and Lee Richardson as Anton Bartok.

Opera

There is also a Fly opera:

• The Fly is 2008 opera by Howard Shore which is based on the 1986 film

Miscellaneous

• The Fly appears in the Looney Tunes short The Night of the Living Duck. He is seen in Daffy Duck's dream where he is among the monsters present in the nightclub that Daffy is in.
• In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Gravedale High, the character Busby is based on the Fly.
• The Fly appears in Hotel Transylvania voiced by Chris Parnell. He works as Hotel Transylvania's fitness coordinator. The Fly can also understand "frozen" languages as seen when he translate a magically-frozen Quasimodo's language which revealed that a disguised Jonathan is actually a human. A recurring gag in the film is that the Fly would spit in his hands and rub it as he tells those following his exercise moves not to do that.

Honors

The story received Playboy magazine's Best Fiction Award for the year, and was selected for inclusion in the Annual of the Year's Best Science Fiction.

References

1. ↑ Vieira, Mark A. (2003). Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. p. 173. ISBN 0-8109-4535-5. 
2. ↑ George Langelaan at the Internet Movie Database