Rating summary
| Movie |  | 4.0 |
| Video |  | 4.5 |
| Audio | | 4.5 |
| Extras | | 4.0 |
| Overall | | 4.5 |
The Fly Blu-ray Movie Review
Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson December 17, 2019
Kurt Neumann's The Fly (1958) is being released with a new, exclusive extra as part of Scream Factory's five-movie box set, The Fly Collection.
My colleague Jeff Kauffman covered the Fox Studio Classics edition of The Fly in 2013. To read his synopsis and analysis of the film/disc, please click here.
The Fly Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
Scream has reused the same background image as the Fox for the main menu (see Screenshot #10) and the lettering and popups on the menu have also been replicated. While Scream has created its own image art to put on this BD-50 disc, the MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer is a carbon copy of the one Jeff critiqued six years ago. Appearing in its originally projected CinemaScope ratio of 2.35:1, the encode sports an average video bitrate of 38017 kbps, which is identical to Fox's.
Scream also provides the same number of chapter markers (twenty-four in all).
The Fly Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
Scream has supplied an English DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 track (2012 kbps, 24-bit). It's very similar to Fox's 4.0 mix, only that the bitrate is down a notch (from 2944 kbps). This is probably due to the addition of a second commentary track. Scream has dropped the Spanish, French, and German DTS 4.0 language dubs.
The only subtitling track Scream has retained is the optional English SDH for the main feature only. It eliminates the Spanish and German subs that are on the US and European BDs. There's also no optional German SDH for the recycled commentary.
The Fly Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
Scream has transferred over the Hedison/Del Valle commentary, a biographical program on Vincent Price, featurettes, and trailer from the prior BDs. Please refer to Jeff's comments on those. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Scream did record a new commentary (see below). On the back cover, Scream lists a photo gallery but I found none. On Fox's four-DVD box set (also titled The Fly Collection but it doesn't include the 1986 remake or its sequel) from 2007, there's a pressbook gallery containing lobby cards, posters, behind-the-scenes stills, and production photos.
- NEW Audio Commentary with Author/Film Historian Steve Haberman and Filmmaker/Film Historian Constantine Nasr - Haberman and Nasr are recorded together for this track. The commentarists deliver mini-bios of the director and cast members, discuss different facets of the production, and remark on particular scenes. Commentaries featuring Haberman and Nasr don't usually provide a lot of scene-specific remarks so it's appreciated when they do during the last section. They go into some of the sequels a little and their relationship to the original. Haberman is very critical of Return of the Fly. The track only has one small gap of silence. In English, not subtitled.
- Audio Commentary with Actor David Hedison and Film Historian David Del Valle
- Biography: Vincent Price (44:03, 480i)
- Fly Trap: Catching a Classic (11:30, 480i)
- Fox Movietone News (0:54, 480i)
- Theatrical Trailer (1:59, 480i)
The Fly Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
If you don't own Fox's 2013 BD of The Fly (1958), then you'll want to obtain it by purchasing the new US box set of The Fly Collection. Though the video transfer and audio presentation are carbon copies of that disc, Scream Factory has added a pretty informative audio commentary with Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr. If you did pick up the previous disc, you'll need to determine the value of the new track and weigh it with how much you enjoy and like the sequels as well as Cronenberg's remake and the sequel to the '86 film. A STRONG RECOMMENDATION for this disc.
