BEFORE: Tonight's Hollywood junk science involves teleportation - or at least, that's how it starts out. DNA combining comes later, right? I feel like I've heard so much about this film over the years, but I've never watched it through, so it's all about being thorough.
Lots of linking possibilities tonight - I could have connected Chevy Chase with Randy Quaid through the "Vacation" movies, then gone through "Independence Day" to get to Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Powder"), or mention the fact that Stephen Tobolowsky was also in "Thelma & Louise" with Geena Davis, but the best connection is through Michael McKean, who was in "Earth Girls Are Easy" with both Goldblum AND Davis.
THE PLOT: A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.
AFTER: Yeah, eating a late dinner right before watching this - not a good idea.
You know, if your average scientist invented a working teleportation device that could transport inanimate matter across great distances (OK, 15 feet, but still), he'd see the opportunity to do FedEx and DHL one better. Overnight service? Forget that, what about when it absolutely, positively has to be there right NOW?
But not Seth Brundle - he's not happy unless his device can also transport living people. He hates flying, I guess, and wants to put the airlines out of business. I can't say as I blame him, planes do go down, don't tell me it doesn't happen. I maintain that Man wasn't meant to fly, either in a plane or with wings coming out of his back.
Brundle hopes to get a "buzz" going over his new invention, so he decides to stop "monkeying" around with lower primate test subjects, and "wing" it by stepping into the device himself. OK, I'll stop with the puns, but you see where I'm going with this, right? There's a bug in the system, literally, hence the title.
Again, I'm no scientist, I can't tell you what would happen when your machine decides to give you a pair of designer genes (sorry) and make you half a fly. Would it play out like this? I have no idea. But maybe they should make those scientists who want to genetically modify our potatoes watch this film.
But, there's balance in the world of sci-fi - for every BrundleFly, there's a Spider-Man. Gaining the proportionate strength, speed and reflexes of a spider, along with webbing and the ability to stick to surfaces sounds like a pretty good trade-off, and all it cost him was one elderly uncle, his dignity, and the ability to sustain a long-term relationship.
There's a famous thought experiment using teleporters, which posits that if a man enters a teleporter and is broken down into composite atoms, essentially, at that point he's dead by disintegration. (We're assuming here that the matter gets converted into energy, and the same or a similar energy is then converted into matter at the other end.) Even if you could re-integrate the atoms in another location, and reassemble a man that looks, talks, and presumably thinks like who you started with, one school of thought says you've created a copy, not the man himself. Or have you? Does it matter whether the teleporter is transferring energy, or merely a genetic blueprint to re-create on the other side?
Also starring John Getz (last seen in "Born on the Fourth of July").
RATING: 4 out of 10 camcorders
SPOOK-O-METER: 6 out of 10. Creepy man-fly is creepy.
Okay: there's a basic problem. If we accept the explanation for the malfunction, how is it that Brundle doesn't emerge as a Human-Fly-Eyelash Mite-Intestinal Bacterium-Etc. hybrid? I mean, if we're accounting for everything inside that chamber with unique DNA...?
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