With directors like Cronenberg, Lynch, Carpenter body horror emerged as a distinct genre around 70's and 80's where the body was treated as susceptible surface of rupture and deformations. The backbone of science and its possibility of bodily transformations (more than the happy possibility, it was more like "science experiment gone wrong") held the motivation behind the spawning of the genre with films like The Fly, The Re-Animator, Shivers etc. The inspiration behind the genre, to some extent comes from science fiction, and its deployment on the body. To understand the genre of body horror, one has to look at how science fiction films as well as texts treat the human body
all good body horror films tend to traverse between the borders for horror and other genres. as you rightly point out, The Fly can be considered as a science fiction film with horror inflictions. Many science fiction films incorporate the body or transformation of the body for the greater good or progression of us as a species. the genre science fiction is broad and encapsulates many topics that can be visualised from a horror perspective – BrainFart6 years ago
