In The Fly, the scientist, Brundle, is trying to solve physical transportation. He is trying to do that scientifically by perfecting teleportation. In the end, the science was successful but his biggest failure was acting alone instead of having a partner there with him. If there had been someone else there when he went into the pod, they would have seen the messages on the computer screen that there was more than one thing in the pod and the disaster could have been avoided. We get to observe the scientific progress from his demonstration of transporting Ronnie’s stocking from one pod to the other to the poor monkey that didn’t fare too well to their steak dinner to successful transportation of the first monkey’s brother. In a moment of emotion when he was upset that Ronnie left him for the evening, he decided to transport himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the fly in the pod and didn’t have a partner to see the warning on the computer. Initially, the only physical changes we saw were in his strength and stamina and he certainly seemed to enjoy flexing that. For most of his transformation, his human mind was dominant but we saw the animal instincts pushing through as the mutation developed. In the reading Mutations and Metamorphosis: Body Horror is Biological Horror, it stated “Interspecies hybrids are abnormal and undesirable not only in the sense that their creation does not occur naturally, but also that they are essentially evolutionary dead ends”. It is interesting in this film that Brundle gets Ronnie pregnant before his transformation is completed but it will not be the same species as him. While we get to observe plenty of body horror in this film, the character doesn’t become a monster until the transformation is well advanced and is desperate to save himself near the end of the movie. As referenced in the overview video, there is the realization that sometimes death is better. After the accidental mutation of the BrundleFly and the port door, he reaches that point and realizes death is the only way out.
In Altered States, the scientist, Jessup, is trying to go back to the beginning of existence. He and his colleagues have created a sensory depravation machine that he uses in combination with drugs to take mind trips back in time. He is using scientific methods for philosophical reasons. There were a lot of religious and philosophical messages in this film with Jessup searching for answers. As his father died, his final word was “horrible”. If the afterlife was horrible, Jessup became obsessed with getting back to the beginning of existence to get answers. “Each trip moves him further back in time until psychological changes manifest in bodily alteration.” (Deleuze, Altered States and Film: Chapter 2, Pharmacoanalysis) During these trips, Jessup gives in to his temptations to open his mind to knowledge and some crazy encounters. After getting back to the beginning of existence, he realized it was also horrible and empty just like the end. We witness body horror at the end when Jessup’s and Emily’s bodies were changing into non-human form and he had to fight to stay human to save his wife. In the end, he finally realized that what he had in the present was worth living for and he was finally able to express love to his wife.