David Cronenberg's The Fly is the most romantic Valentine's Day movie

David Cronenberg’s 1986 film The Fly, adapted from the 1958 B-movie and George Langelaan's 1957 short story, runs 96 minutes of mad science and grotesque body transformations. An inventor researching teleportation accidentally splices his genetic code with that of a fly and gradually mutates into a hideous monster.

It is also a film about the woman who loves him. The movie relentlessly focuses on a single romantic relationship. Scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meets journalist Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis), invites her to his lab to see his telepods, and their chemistry quickly becomes the engine of the story.

In one early scene she slides off a stocking as a demonstration item, and sexual attraction helps Seth realize why the device fails: he hasn’t taught the teleporter’s computer “to be made crazy by the flesh, the poetry of the steak.” At first the fly DNA seems to enhance Seth, then it turns him into an increasingly monstrous figure.

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