a review of 变蝇人

HOOPTOBER NINE! NIGHT TWENTY-SEVEN! Now that I've finally seen the original (after watching the Cronenberg version at least three or four times) I have to say that this holds up marvelously even in comparison. There's something genuinely elegant about how this starts off as a deeply absurd and shocking locked-room murder mystery, gives way to a gee-whiz sci-fi story with David Hedison playing a suitably charismatic yet flawed main character, and then ends as a slow-motion tragedy with Patricia Owens giving us every stage of grief as Hedison slips away piece by piece. It's fun to see Vincent Price in a role where he's playing a genuinely good and decent person, but Owens' performance is really the heart of the film. Finally seeing this as the source material for what Cronenberg did to refashion this story in the '80s makes me think that we might be due for another remake that reimagines this story in another light for our current age. I don't know what that would even be like, but I'd love to see one of our top horror filmmakers of the 2020s tackle it.