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It's Way Too Hot to Launch a Blog The Grand Canyon State of High Weirdness

The Fury (1978, d. Brian De Palma)Terrorist attacks! Government villains! Clairvoyant weapons of mass destruction! Written off largely as preposterous and reactionary in the discontented aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, director Brian De Palma's comfortably hammy, sensationally gory and decadently entertaining The Fury (1978) needn't tweak its agenda much to be construed as radical satire under the Days of Dubya.

Based on a screenplay and the first in a series of horror novels by John Farris, De Palma's next-up after Carrie (1976) went big is a predictable example of what happens to young mavericks who get tossed a bloated studio budget after a modest success. Plunging head-first into a mountain of popcorn, De Palma feverishly mashes together the spy-thriller and paranomal-themed giallo with a hint of familial (and as he's prone, Hitchcockian) melodrama, marauding through memorable setpieces with not a damn concern that its hokey logic warrants a three-ring spit take. But even if it's too emotionally icy to share a mantle with his greatest early work, Sisters (1973), this zippy indulgence deserves to be dusted off on DVD and hailed an occult classic.

The brassy Jaws of John Williams' high-contrast Herrmannian score give some bite to the film's opening John Cassavetes, Kirk Douglas (twice), Amy Irving, and a Rick Baker-crafted corpse. beachfront vacation sequence, as devoted father and elite U.S. agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas, all dimple and grimace) tussles playfully -- if not a little homoerotically -- with his teenage son Robin (Andrew Stevens, son of Stella), a "special" kid with a bright future and some pretty bitchin' telekinetic powers. Joined by Peter's cucumber-cool buddy and 20-year colleague, Ben Childress (John Cassavetes, one of the film's undeniable pleasures), we're quickly established on the shoreline of Israel, although the non-descript title card reads "Mid East, 1977." SUDDENLY, just after Ben shares some goodbyes over Peter's upcoming retirement, sheiks in speedboats come blasting in with AK-47s! Wearing a pair of short shorts that semi-consciously becomes a recurring wardrobe gag, Peter manages to steal an autorifle and take out some of the cartoonish Arabic extremists. Left for dead, ol' Spartacus overhears that trusted Ben is not just in cahoots with the assassins, but in the middle of kidnapping his psionically endowed son, now a valuable token of high-stakes commercialism and global domination. (I double-dog dare you to remake this, Bruckheimer.)

After you stew for a moment over this random thought: the former Mrs. Spielberg's initials are indeed A.I. -- Amy Irving costars as a second ESP-ecially gifted teen named Gillian, who shares an extrasensory bond (kinda like cerebral wi-fi?) with Robin, whom she's only met in visions. Hoping to physically connect with her mysterious other while they're both being hunted by friendly dad and bureaucratic foe, Gillian picks up clues through the psychic residue of every Dead Zone Hell hath no Fury like this man looking scorned. handshake and Firestarter nosebleed, building to a Scanners denouement that might hint at how this film disappeared in a fog of its superior imitators, a Bermuda Triangle of David Cronenberg, Stephen King and De Palma's own latter-day populist output.

Unraveling more of this ball of plot might accidentally reveal six or seven separate strands that don't neatly tie into one story, but that's amazingly part of The Fury's white-knuckle charm. High-gloss directorial style (what, no splitscreen?) hijacks the convoluted story arcs just before audiences can think to ask how anything could possibly make sense. In today's context, it's at least a bigger hoot than most of this summer's ten-dollar rides, which can't even tie their shoes, let alone get twisted up in knots.

CAMEO FUN FACT: All making their feature-film debuts are nubile Darryl Hannah and E.R. regular Laura Innes as a couple of lunchtime princesses in schoolgirl uniforms, PLUS a blinky over-actor named Dennis Franz, playing a cop who Kirk Douglas carjacks!
August 15, 2005 Click to COMMENT

8 Critics Rave!

Glad to see this film get some recognition. I first saw it back in '78 when some friends and I snuck into an afternoon showing at the 86th St. East -- we thought it was the coolest film ever, and spent the rest of the day trying to move stuff via telekinesis.

I saw it again on German TV last year, where it is known as Teufelskreis Alpha (Vicious Circle Alpha), which is a pretty cool title if you ask me.

Congrats on the blog!

Filmbrain [11:42AM, 08/16/2005]

Thanks, Filmbrain.

The funny thing is, I wouldn't call myself a hardcore De Palma fan by any stretch, and so much of his work frustrates me because it feels like he long ago had a makeover as a self-parodist (I'm thinking Femme Fatale, Snake Eyes, and even his overrated '80s Hitch riffs like Body Double and Dressed to Kill, though I'm still a sucker for Blow Out). For me, The Fury works because it drops its drawers (like Kirk Douglas throughout) to show it has the balls to take on way too many plotlines, and always at a continual speed of full-throttle mayhem. De Palma has a post-millennial masterpiece in him, I'm almost positive, but my hopes aren't high with either Toyer, his Untouchables prequel, or the wrongheadedly casted The Black Dahlia.

Aaron! [12:23PM, 08/16/2005]

Granted, other than the great epic tracking shot, Snake Eyes is strictly throwaway, but even the atrocious acting by Rebecca Romijn-Lettuce couldn't detract from how very clever (and 70s) Femme Fatale was.

I'm a child of DePalma -- films like Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Obsession, and Dressed to Kill were big events for us young cinephiles. Obsession (with a great screenplay by Paul Schrader) was one of those films I used to watch endlessly back in the early days of "Home Box Office". It's flawed, but yonks better than its contemporary peers.

Granted, I'm a bit of a DePalma apologist, and will even defend Mission to Mars, as hard as that may seem.

Sure, he's been known to copy Hitchcock, but so has Chabrol.

Filmbrain [02:46PM, 08/16/2005]

Kael's rave-up of this film is one of the columns her detractors cackle over-- no one else had the nerve. I enjoyed the set-pieces but left frustrated with the incongruity between the actors (Irving and a galvanic Cassavetes) and the plastic (Andrew Stevens and the British actress coming-over from Mark Lester films)-- felt the poignance of C. Snodgrass in a comeback role. John Williams in this period regularly did scores that sounded like tributes to this or that distinguished predecessor-- the score is less anchored in Hermann than in film-work by Prokofiev and (to a lesser extent) Shostakovich.

john warthen [08:52PM, 08/22/2005]

Scattershot performances on a whole, yes. But fun, fun, fun like De Palma so often is not (I think he takes himself too seriously considering the make and model of his oeuvre).

This Williams bit intrigues me, though. If I had the ear to recognize rip-off/homage to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, I'd be better equipped to agree or disagree -- but considering De Palma's undying affection for Hitchcock (including his employ of the actual Herrmann for Obsession previously), the score seems and sounds as much "anchored" to him as today's posturing young garage-rockers are to The Stooges, Gang of Four, and every '80s New Wave act imaginable, no?

Aaron! [09:18PM, 08/22/2005]

Wow... The Fury is a great way to start things off. Dropping the giallo reference is really key - the film is the closest De Palma ever got to achieving the sort of anti-narrative (hyper-narrative?) those Italians so loved. Here the plot is impossible to reconcile - to attempt a clear explanation would probably cause the viewer to explode, but I don't think that's De Palma's intention (if it ever is, but I'm biased as he is one of my favorites). If anything, I see The Fury as taking the idea of the Carrie mold and creating what is essentially an experimental film - one that is simply an endless reel of interconnecting images, movements, and sounds (in a Pudovkin sort of way... Really, though - the "steps" sequence, in slow-motion, with layered images of several spatial planes is tremendous and unprecedented in a major film). Instead of moving forward through a plot, as institutionalized cinema often does, The Fury is much more interested in moving through the toolbox of cinema as it creates something which really lives up to the idea of something cinematic.

DEF [05:44PM, 08/24/2005]

I wholeheartedly agree with that evaluation, Dave.
And welcome to the mix!

Aaron! [07:52PM, 08/24/2005]

The Fury is one of my all time favorite movies just because the simple fact that Amy Irving was on the movie. She had done so well in CARRIE and came back in THE FURY and done an even better performance as Gillian Bellaver, the troubled teen who sees horrible vision of the manipulated Robin Sandza.
It is just a GREAT movie.

Brad Lockhart
Tennessee

Brad Lockhart [12:27AM, 06/30/2006]

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What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!


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Cinephiliac cannot be found in any English dictionary, as only a "cinephile" (film enthusiast) would suffer from "cinephilia" (obsessive love of cinema). To better understand, "Cinephiliac" suffers to the bone from "cinephilia." Cinephiliac is the not-so-secret codename for what will inevitably become the Greatest Film Rental Library (read: "video store") in Brooklyn, NY. We will endorse the preservation of film culture and provide the best in cinema, renting DVDs not often available from larger chains and smaller "mom-and-pop" stores; We will specialize in film festival award winners, independent releases, avant-garde and cult classics, foreign films, documentaries, special interest, arthouse favorites and other critically acclaimed titles, new and old. Large scale studio releases will be only be made lightly available to secondary markets of less discriminating tastes. Cinephiliac exists to attract, entertain, enrich and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers. Cinephiliac is the brainchild of entrepreneuer (and professional film critic) Aaron Hillis, who is still offering Phase I investment opportunities throughout 2005 and 2006. To request online access to Aaron's business plan, address all inquiries here. Aaron Hillis vividly remembers the first R-rated movie his parents ever allowed him to watch, the 1986 sci-fi/action epic Aliens, which features a myriad of gory "chest-bursting" effects that aren't exactly Mom's idea of family entertainment. "My folks weren't worried about the violence having a negative effect on me," Aaron recalls, "because even as a fourth grader, I was basically explaining to them how the filmmakers created these fantastic illusions that existed outside of reality!" Growing up with this undeterrable passion for the cinema led Aaron to study Motion Picture Production and Film Theory at Arizona State Univsity and U.T. Austin (University of Texas), but it wasn't until the summer of 2002, while living in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn, NY), that he began to make his living through the movies: "It was pretty wild. Not only did I stumble onto a regular gig writing DVD and film reviews for Premiere Magazine, but I was concurrently being asked to take full reign as manager of an indie video store in my neighborhood." After 16 months of managing the Hole-in-the-Wall Video store, where he increased annual profits from 7% to 31% through creative marketing and unique innovations, Aaron finally got the gumption to reap the rewards of opening his own store. Cinephiliac will build upon prototype business strategies already proven successful for Aaron, such as concentrating on quality movies instead of simply mainstream commercial releases, a previously unmet demand in the area. "The most important thing for me is enlightening people to the vast diversities of film culture they might not even know about. Most filmgoers would rent better titles if they simply knew they existed, things you won't find at Blockbuster, Netflix or an 'In-Demand' cable service. When customers come into my store, I want them to experience the happy medium between film school and their favorite hangout." When he isn't dissecting the works of Jean-Luc Godard or Russ Meyer, Aaron used to take the form of an illustrator, a part-time DJ, a full-blown coffee addict and a doting boyfriend. His latest Premiere reviews are available to read here. CLICK the titles below for pop-up reviews of Aaron's Top Ten Films of 2003: 1. Lost in Translation 2. Spider 3. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 4. Pistol Opera 5. Finding Nemo 6. Kill Bill: Volume 1 7. The Man Without a Past 8. Capturing the Friedmans 9. Irreversible 10. Hukkle - Honorable Mention (11-20, alphabetically): All the Real Girls . Bad Santa . Friday Night . Girlhood . The Good Thief . Raising Victor Vargas . The Revolution Will Not Be Televised . School of Rock . Swimming Pool . 28 Days Later If only I had seen them during 2003: American Splendor . Big Fish . Bus 174 . City of God . Cold Mountain . demonlover . Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary . The Fog of War . In America . The Son . The Station Agent . Ten . The Triplets of Belleville . 21 Grams . Unknown Pleasures . 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