24. The Fly (1958)
No list of horror films would be complete were there not a Vincent Price film. By far my all-time favorite freak out film for Price is The Fly. Not the fancy gimmicky one of Jeff Goldblum’s but the raw and frightening one starring Price. There is no one in film that sells crazy quietly, insanely and maddeningly slow, like Vincent Price. There are the machines of course, there are always machines with mad scientists, but the focus of the film is all on Andre Delambre (David Hedison) and his brother Francois (Price).

Andre is carefully, strategically working to solve the problem of wireless transportation. Using a device to transport living tissue, something goes horribly, frighteningly wrong: parts of a fly’s body replace parts of Delambre’s. Should that not be horror enough?  But at the end of the movie, the final scene…the screen enlarges, and enlarges and enlarges until we see…Francois Delambre looking down at fly’s body on which sits Andre’s head. A tiny voice screams “help me, help me” as a spider slowly creeps toward him.

I get chills even today just thinking about it, years later. It’s not slick and modern, like the later version, but it’s far more horrifying. Your scary movie collection is not complete if you don’t have this one. Watch the video if you dare, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!