Real Romance, Real Scares, Real Gore, Really Great!

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2007)

This is a landmark of horror/sci-fi, not just for the eighties but forever.
A reclusive -but hunky! lol - scientist named Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meets an attractive, smart journalist, Veronica (Geena Davis, Goldblum's real-life girlfriend at the time and future wife). She drives him back to his place, and on the ride, he becomes motion-sick, which, we discover, was his true motivation for developing his mind-blowing invention - TELEPODS, capable of transporting (at this stage)inanimate objects from one place to another like a magician's trick, only it's not a trick.
After a contentious start to their relationship(he is upset upon discovering she is taping their first conversation and she refuses to return the tape, as the story is much too newsworthy to give up and he understood she was a reporter), the two become friends as he continues working on his marvelous new invention, trying to figure out how to make it possible to "teleport" living things. He attempts to begin with animals with the hope of progressing to humans, but his first attempt on a baboon is - I mean this literally - a bloody disaster. As he begins to open up emotionally to his journalist/friend, the two become lovers, much to the jealousy (disguised by snarkiness and sarcasm) of her current boss/former lover, Stathis (John Getz). One night, she discovers that Stathis plans to run with the Brundle story without her, she goes to confront him . . . leaving Seth alone to stew in his booze and jealousy, a bad combination. On a drunken impulse, he decides to teleport himself, but there is a fly in the machine with him . . . and the rest is eighties - and all time - horror history.
The acting? Could we have asked for a better cast? Goldblum is quirkily brilliant, Davis would go on shortly hereafter to be an Oscar-winner, and Getz holds his own. Cronenberg . . . well, what more do I have to say than that? Cronenberg. There was some talk of Goldblum being nominated for an Oscar for his work here, but that unfortunately did not happen. However, the make-up effects did win, and this was well deserved. A not to be missed classic.