Synopsis for
The Fly (1986) More at IMDb Pro »

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a brillliant inventor. At a party thrown by his financier, Bartok Industries, for the press, Brundle meets Veronica Quaiffe (Geena Davis), a reporter for Particle Magazine. He invites her to come back to his apartment, where he shows her his latest invention: teleporter pods, or "telepods," that disintegrate matter, transmit it across space, and then reintegrate it. She realizes this could be the invention of the century, and, over Seth's objections, goes to her boss and ex-lover, Stathis Borans (John Getz), to convince him to publish the story. Boranz is uninterested, believing the whole thing to be a magic trick. Brundle comes to see her at work, and is relieved that Stathis didn't want to publish the story, because his telepods are not ready to be made public yet. Although they can transmit inanimate matter, it can't handle living things. He offers to let Veronica track his progress as he tries to work out the kinks, if she will wait to write the story until he is finished. She agrees.

Veronica ends up spending much of her time at Seth's apartment while he works, and the two of them become more and more attracted to each other. His attempts to fix the machines are unsuccessful, at one point turning a babboon inside out through telportation. Soon Veronica falls in love with Seth, and they make love. During the act, she makes an offhand remark about "the flesh" driving women crazy. This gives Seth the inspiration he needs: he will teach the computer to be "driven crazy" by flesh.

Seth works on his machines that day while Veronica goes shopping for a gift for him. While shopping, she runs into Stathis agai, who now believes that Seth's project is genuine and should be published.

Back at Seth's apartment, Veronica watches as Seth puts a second babboon through the teleporters, and this time the babboon comes through unharmed. As they prepare to celebrate, however, Veronica finds a package from Stathis. Inside is a design for a cover story on Seth. She runs back to his office to stop him from publishing prematurely, leaving Seth to celebrate alone. He gets drunk and becomes convinced that Veronica is resuming her relationship with Stathis. He decides that he is ready to conclude to send himself through the teleporters. Little does he realize that when he goes through, a small housefly is in the pod with him. He comes through the other end apparently normal, not realizing that the fly is gone.

Veronica comes back to him that night and they reconcile, but some his journey through the telepods begins to show some strange side effects. Thick, coarse hairs begin to grow on his back. He develops a craving for sugar, his body develops an almost instantly more athletic build, and his sexual stamina is seemingly endless. The sex alone begins to wear out Veronica, so Seth sends her away and goes in search of a woman who can keep up with him.

At a bar, he meets a woman named Tawney, and armwrestles with another man to compete over who gets to take her home. Seth wins by breaking the other man's arms, giving it a compounds fracture. After a night of sex, Tawney gives Seth an alcohol rub, which severely irritates him. He then tries to get her to go through the telepods, but she refuses. Seth tells her not to be afraid, but at that moment Veronica arrives, telling her she should be afraid. Tawney leaves, and Veronica confronts Seth about the changes she has seen. Not only is his back growing more hairs, but his face is breaking out in blisters. She then informs him that she had some of his back hairs analyzed, and that that are most likely insect hairs. Seth refuses to believe anything is wrong with him, and he kicks Veronica out of his apartment.

In the bathroom later on, though, Seth does notice changes. His fingernails have become brittle, and come out with the slightest effort. His face has more blisters. His glands are secreting a strange fluids. He concludes, like Veronica, that something must have gone wrong when he went through the telepods. He checks the record of his teleportation, and his computer tells him that there was a "secondary element" in the pod with him, which he recognizes as a housefly. When he asks the computer what happened to the fly, it tells him that he and the fly have been spliced together into a single organism.

A month goes by in which Seth and Veronica do not speak, but finally he contacts her and asks her to see him. When she arrives, she sees that he is heavily deteriorating. His face is lines with pockmarks, and he needs canes to walk. He has to wear gloves to keep from biting his fingernails off. He has begun to vomit up a corrosive enzyme, like a fly. As they meet, his ear falls off. He refuses to take help from any professional doctors, not wanting to be a lab rat.

Veronica goes to Stathis, hoping to find some way to help Seth. He warns her not to go back to him, fearing contagion, but then he asks to go ahead and visit him again to document what is happening, so Stathis can see and find a way to help. She returns to his apartment to find him crawling on the walls, as he now realizes what is happening: he is turning him into a human-fly hybrid he calls "Brundelfly," and wants Veronica to document his metamorphosis.

She brings home a video that demonstrates Brundle's new eating habits, but also has more bad news: she is pregnant with Seth's child. Stathis encourages her to talk to Seth before aborting the baby. When she sees him this time, he has deteriorated even further. He no longer wears clothes, and his skin has become swollen and lumpy, and more body parts have fallen off. He warns her not to come back, because his instincts are taking over and he will not be able to keep himself from hurting her. She leaves without telling him she is pregnant, and demands Stathis take her to a doctor for an immediate abortion. Seth overhears them talking, however, and follows them to the doctor's office, where he kidnaps her and takes her back home, asking her to have the baby as it may be the only thing left of his humanity.

Stathis follows them to Seth's apartment, armed with a shotgun, but Seth gets the drop on him--literally. Seth jumps down from the skylight, catching Stathis by surprise. Seeing that Stathis means to shoot him, Seth defends himself by vomiting his digestive enzyme on Stathis's right arm and left foot, metling both appendages. He is preparing to vomit on his face and make him a meal when Veronica, who Seth has kept on the roof, intervenes. Seth lets Stathis live, but asks for Veronica's help to make him human again. When she asks him to explain, he shows her the plan he has created: he wants to use the telepods as a gene-splicer yet again, using them to fuse himself with Veronica and their unborn child, in the hopes that her untainted humanity will be enough to stop the metamorphosis. Veronica resists, but Seth tries to force her into it. As she struggles to free herself from Seth's grip, she accidentally rips off his jaw, which sparks the final stages of Seth's transformation. His insect limbs shed their human skin, revealing the insect body underneath. The rest of his face rips apart to reveal the fly's face that has been growing under it. The now completely transformed Brundlefly throws Veronica into one pod and puts himself in the other. Just as the teleportation is about to begin, Stathis is able to shoot the cables connected to Veronica's pod and open the door to rescue her. Brundlefly breaks out of his telepod in an attempt to salvage the procedure, but before he can get completely out of his pod, the teleportation sequence begins, and part of the telepod is transporting with Brundlefly. The computer, deprived of a subject from Veronica's pod, decides to fuse Brundlefly with the pieces of the telepod that it took. Brundlefly emerges from the other pod, his lower body no longer a fly's legs, but rather a grotesque fusion of flesh and machinery.

In excruciating pain, Brundlefly crawls toward Veronica, who arms herself with Stathis's shotgun. Rather than try to harm her, however, Brundlefly puts his head under the barrel of the shotgun, silently asking Veronica to end his life. Veronica resists, but when Brundlefly lets out a painful moan, she finds the strength she needs. She pulls the trigger, blowing apart Brundlefly's head and mercifully ending the life of the man she loved.