40th anniversary screening of David Cronenberg's body horror classic at the Planetarium, part of the Bristol Film Festival's Halloween 2026 programme.
The Planetarium is screening David Cronenberg's The Fly on Friday 16 October, from 8:45pm to 11pm, as part of the Bristol Film Festival's Halloween 2026 programme. It's a 40th anniversary showing of the 1986 film, which itself was a remake of the 1958 Vincent Price B-movie. The original came out in 1958, and Cronenberg's version followed nearly thirty years later; this screening marks four decades since that one hit the screen.
It's widely regarded as a masterpiece that fuses science fiction and horror, and much of that comes down to Jeff Goldblum. He delivers one of his all-time greatest performances as the ill-fated scientist who fails to sort out a bug in his brilliant invention before it's too late. The title is a bit of a double entendre: the bug in the machine and the insect that ends up in the teleportation pod with him. From there, the film moves into the body horror Cronenberg is known for, as the scientist's DNA slowly merges with the fly's, and he begins to change in ways that are as grotesque as they are heartbreaking.
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The screening is part of the Bristol Film Festival's Halloween 2026 programme at The Planetarium, which also takes in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956), turning 70 this year. Between the two, that's over a century of sci-fi horror across a couple of nights. The Fly runs from 8:45pm to 11pm on Friday 16 October at The Planetarium in Bristol.
