The Fly is an easy movie to misunderstand. It’s easy to take a sidelong look at it’s terrifying creature effects and dismiss it as horror. It’s easy to consider its teleportation conceit and dismiss it as science fiction pulp.

But The Fly is, perhaps ironically, perhaps by design, a melding of different genres.

The Fly is a love story: love lost, love found, love lost again. The relationship between Brundle and Veronica is the heart of the story, the core that helps us to empathize with what is happening on screen even as Brundle transforms into a hideous monster. It’s not just his loss we feel, but Veronica’s as well. None of that would have the same impact if we didn’t buy Brundle’s wonky charm or feel Veronica’s frustration with her ex-boyfriend and still-boss.

It helps that in 1986, when The Fly was released, Jeff Goldblum had not yet become a caricature of himself. He had not been savaged by legions of two bit imitators, punctuating every syllable of his Jurassic Park dialogue with uh’s and um’s. He’s more human here than as the more famous Doctor Ian Malcolm. He’s nerdy, yes, but also vulnerable. Awkward, and yet confident.

The Fly is also a cautionary tale about the dangers of ambition. Brundle is fused with the fly in the first place because he doesn’t have the patience to wait for further testing on the machine. He knows his invention is sound and he doesn’t want to wait on everyone else to catch up to the fact that he’s a genius. And once the fly is a part of him, he becomes even more obsessed. He mistakes his failure for success, his sickness for vigor. His overconfidence makes him incautious and proud.

Obviously there’s a metaphor here that applies to more than just science. Good work of any kind requires confidence, yes, but it also requires patience and foresight. And that first scene where Brundle invites a reporter back to his place for an interview and then blanches at the thought that she might publish it demonstrates immediately that Brundle has neither. His flaws are there from the very beginning, but he can’t see them for himself until they start showing up in the mirror.

And of course, lest this review become too pretentious for its own good, the body horror effects on display in this film are simply amazing. In an era where wire-frame graphics on a computer screen where still being drawn by hand, director David Cronenberg created special effects that could compete with and even surpass effects being shown in theatres today. The mixture of makeup effects and puppetry used to bring Brundlefly to life are nothing short of breathtaking.

All of these different pieces play together to make a harmony that’s equal parts touching and unsettling, human and horrifying, sweet and bitter.

The Fly is remembered as a classic of the body horror genre, and it deserves that honor. But there’s so much more to the story buzzing just under the surface.

Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw .

To hear more of our thoughts on The Fly check out Episode 167 of the Human Echoes Podcast.