31 Screams: Al Hedison

The ending of Kurt Neumann's THE FLY (1958) is a gargntuan downer, even with the cutesy coda that shows Vincent Price becoming a surrogate father to the son of doomed/dead scientist Al Hedison. It's a studio-mandated feel-good conclusion that doesn't for a minute ameliorate the horror of the previous 90 minutes - in which a man, whose atoms have become fused with that of a common housefly and who is stuck with the insect's head and foreleg where his arm used to be, and who fails every attempt to reverse the process - defeatedly crushes his mutated skull and upper body in an industrial press so that there can be no evidence of his tragic scientific misstep. It's grim stuff but what follows, well brother... that just takes the cake.

With the manfly dead and his wife, Patricia Owens, about to be carted off to an insane asylum for his murder, Price and police inspector Herbert Marshall make the ghastly eleventh hour discovery of a flyman caught in a spiderweb in the garden. Here they are brought face to face with the inescapable fact that fantastic story they've just been told is absolutely true, its final act being played out in front of their unbelieving eyes. They can only look on in horror as the fly, who has retained the scientist's human head and a arm, is about to be consumed by a spider.

I'm not sure what to make of the flyman. As most of the dead scientist's intelligence was retained within his manfly brain, there obviously isn't much left for that of the flyman... who screams pitiably as he meets his doom. His voice is high-pitched - just within the range of human hearing - but his pleas are unmistakeable. "Help me," he cries out. "Help me." And as the spider draws closer, it sounds as if he is yelling "Go away... go away" to the spider in childish desperation. And that's just it-- this scene horrifies, it cuts to the bone because it's like watching a child being murdered right in front of you.

Although Bey Nye's makeup suggests dessication and age, there's an innocence about the flyman, a seemingly complete inability to understand why this is happening, that makes him seem like a child. Your heart breaks, it positively breaks at the uncomprehending terror of this poor creature, the most helpless being in all Creation. Empathy sits cheek by jowel with revulsion as you watch this death occur and hear this thing's dying entreaties for someone to save it, to be its hero, to spare the only life it has.

Just as the spider descends upon the flyman, the inspector hefts a large stone and crushes both creatures, killing them together and sparing us the coup de grace. "I shall never forget that scream as long as I live," the inspector confesses... and neither shall we.