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The Fury

The Fury

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hell Hath No Fury Like Amy Irving
Review: I recently viewed this movie again (I saw it back in 1980 on television) and it still holds up nicely, like most of Mr. DePalma's films. The derailing electric train, the woman going through the windshield (very shocking), the other woman being "spin dried" telekinetically and the better-than-the-novel finale all add up to a disturbing but hard-to-forget rollercoaster ride.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Fury Kirk Douglas
Review: I totally enjoyed the film. As a parent of three gifted children it was very believeable for me and I rooted for Douglas all the way. Filled with action, tragedy as well as a bit of comedy, it held me to my seat until the explosive ending. It's a film I will enjoy again and again!!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Romper Stomper of a psychic movie
Review: I'm going to contradict myself now. If anyone has read my review on Scanners (good film, buy that if you buy this), you'll know that I downmarked it because it has aged. As should of this movie.

Call me fickle, but I don't feel it so much with this. I don't know why - I really don't. I suppose it's because there is less to ground you onto the year.

Anyhow, moving on, the film is an alternate Carrie. Alternate because the girl who is psychic isn't anything but normal. She is confused and upset about what is happening to her, but soon realises that she has to take control to avoid manipulation.

I think the entire film, beautifully shot and executed, is just a build up for the final scene. I have never seen such a powerful minute of cinematography in many a moon. Top marks to all involved for the effect on this one. I say no more.

Suffice to say, this film isn't interested in blowing up towns, in mass death and destruction. Indeed, the few deaths that occur are uncommonly tragic, especially the suicide of one of the main characters. Death is treated as it is, painful and uncomfortable.

Okay. Now the final line. It's good. If you enjoyed Carrie, Scanners, Kirk Douglas, any of the Cronenberg type films, you will like this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: DE PALMA AT HIS BEST
Review: Long maligned as an Alfred Hitchcock rip-off, Brian de Palma can rest on his laurels, having given us such visually stunning examples of horrific ballet. In "The Fury" there are so many scenes of intense but beautiful violence that you wonder where the imagery originated. While DePalma has often said he was influenced by the masterful Hithcock, he doesn't rip him off; he accentuates the master with his visually stunning style.
The slomo and quiet scene in which Carrie Snodgress meets an untimely fate is mesmerizing, even knowing what the ultimate outcome is; likewise the scenes where Amy Irving "sees" events that have or will happen. DePalma's camera swerves and sizzles. The lovely Fiona Lewis' demise is horrifically fascinating in its cruelty. (No, I'm not sadistic). The cast: isn't it fun to see scruffy Dennis Franz in one of his first roles as the gum-chewing, love my car cop? And Kirk Douglas, no longer a youngster, still looked amazingly fit and masculine in a role he would never get to play in today's youthful standards. Amy Irving is gorgeous and quite a good young actress; Andrew Stevens is handsome and effectively icy; Charles Durning and Carol Rossen appropriately vile; John Cassavettes is a devilish villain; and the almost forgotten Carrie Snodgress is a delight. Writer John Farris wrote the book which he adapted for the screen, and did a fine job. Too bad he waited so long for sequels---they probably won't get filmed, but they should. THE FURY is one of DePalma's best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: DE PALMA AT HIS BEST
Review: Long maligned as an Alfred Hitchcock rip-off, Brian de Palma can rest on his laurels, having given us such visually stunning examples of horrific ballet. In "The Fury" there are so many scenes of intense but beautiful violence that you wonder where the imagery originated. While DePalma has often said he was influenced by the masterful Hithcock, he doesn't rip him off; he accentuates the master with his visually stunning style.
The slomo and quiet scene in which Carrie Snodgress meets an untimely fate is mesmerizing, even knowing what the ultimate outcome is; likewise the scenes where Amy Irving "sees" events that have or will happen. DePalma's camera swerves and sizzles. The lovely Fiona Lewis' demise is horrifically fascinating in its cruelty. (No, I'm not sadistic). The cast: isn't it fun to see scruffy Dennis Franz in one of his first roles as the gum-chewing, love my car cop? And Kirk Douglas, no longer a youngster, still looked amazingly fit and masculine in a role he would never get to play in today's youthful standards. Amy Irving is gorgeous and quite a good young actress; Andrew Stevens is handsome and effectively icy; Charles Durning and Carol Rossen appropriately vile; John Cassavettes is a devilish villain; and the almost forgotten Carrie Snodgress is a delight. Writer John Farris wrote the book which he adapted for the screen, and did a fine job. Too bad he waited so long for sequels---they probably won't get filmed, but they should. THE FURY is one of DePalma's best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: DE PALMA AT HIS BEST
Review: Long maligned as an Alfred Hitchcock rip-off, Brian de Palma can rest on his laurels, having given us such visually stunning examples of horrific ballet. In "The Fury" there are so many scenes of intense but beautiful violence that you wonder where the imagery originated. While DePalma has often said he was influenced by the masterful Hithcock, he doesn't rip him off; he accentuates the master with his visually stunning style.
The slomo and quiet scene in which Carrie Snodgress meets an untimely fate is mesmerizing, even knowing what the ultimate outcome is; likewise the scenes where Amy Irving "sees" events that have or will happen. DePalma's camera swerves and sizzles. The lovely Fiona Lewis' demise is horrifically fascinating in its cruelty. (No, I'm not sadistic). The cast: isn't it fun to see scruffy Dennis Franz in one of his first roles as the gum-chewing, love my car cop? And Kirk Douglas, no longer a youngster, still looked amazingly fit and masculine in a role he would never get to play in today's youthful standards. Amy Irving is gorgeous and quite a good young actress; Andrew Stevens is handsome and effectively icy; Charles Durning and Carol Rossen appropriately vile; John Cassavettes is a devilish villain; and the almost forgotten Carrie Snodgress is a delight. Writer John Farris wrote the book which he adapted for the screen, and did a fine job. Too bad he waited so long for sequels---they probably won't get filmed, but they should. THE FURY is one of DePalma's best.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Guilty? About what?
Review: Pleasure yes, but hardly a guilty one. This is De Palma's most staggering display of moxie -- his attempt to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock at every turn. Oh sure, the story's kind of a "Carrie" retread, and the plot doesn't make perfect sense, but who cares? This movie is an exercise in sheer technique, nowhere on display more than the classic ending -- a spewing, multi-angle Grande Guignol spectacle that gives nothing but satisfaction. My favorite actor, John Cassavetes -- maybe the only villain in film history who keeps his broken arm in a black sling -- plays it for all it's worth. This is a gloriously bloody movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The Fury has gotten better with age
Review: Seen by many as, at best, a triumph of style over substance, The Fury holds up amazingly well some 23 years after its initial release. If anything, it seems better.

Ahead of its time, The Fury follows what we would now call the classic "X-Files" formula: a government-conspiracy thriller grafted onto a supernatural Grande Guignol melodrama. Peter Sanza (Kirk Douglas) used to work for a super-secret government agency that cultivates talent for psychic warfare. Unluckily for him, his teen-aged son Robin (Andrew Stevens) is one of the most gifted telekinetics that has ever come their way. Co-worker and uber-villian Frank Childress (the late John Cassavettes) coldly decides to kill the father and take the son off to Psychic Boot Camp to become a warrior. Peter escapes and spends the rest of the film trying to re-acquire his son...by any means necessary.

The screenplay is not as dumb as most critics thought when The Fury was first released. There is an uneasy Freudian sub-text about father/son rivalry at the onset of puberty, and while no one would accuse The Fury of anything like profundity, the allegory about the difficulty of adolescence and coming to grips with newfound powers and responsibilities is reasonably well developed. Add to that Brian DePalma's always-cool direction, and for ten bucks, you can't beat it. Especially if you're an X-Files fan.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The worst of Brian De Palma.
Review: The first 10 minutes of The Fury are classic Brian De Palma. It begins on a beach with a father (Kirk Douglas) and son bonding, then De Palma shocks the audience with a shootout that blazes from out of nowhere, resulting in many deaths. This is an exciting sequence, directed in a manner that only De Palma could have accomplished. Unfortunately, after that the entire film grows increasingly obvious, with suspenseless scene after suspenseless scene, all the way to the highly-touted finale, which is indeed an impressive array of pyrotechnics, but hardly anything else. For good Brian De Palma films, stick with Mission to Mars, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, or Body Double.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Fury- another De Palma triumph!
Review: The Fury is a great film that takes some elments from other films such as Carrie, and spins a totally different tale of violence and psychic powers. This was De Palma's first blockbuster movie- even if it didn't do as well as they thought at the box office. It's about a teenage boy named Robin who is kidnapped after a murder attempt at his father. The father (played by the magnificent Kirk Douglas) survives, and is still trying to find his son after 11 months. But the boy has psychic powers- which is the reason they want him in the first place. These "powers" psychically link him to a girl named Gillian (Carrie's Amy Irving), who tries desperately to help the father locate his son in an attempt to meet him.

But the experiments that the people who kidnapped him make him under-go have a strange effect on Robin- they turn him into a destructive beast who will stop at nothing to get his own way. Gillian also has destructive powers- if she touches someone at a certain moment, they will bleed, some a little, some a lot. And she can either use these for good, or for evil...

The father and Gillian search for Robin, and when they find him, he turns out to be a shadow of his former self. One who was once a good, fun-loving teen has turned into a monster that will kill to get what he wants...

While not as good as Carrie, it is a well done thriller by a master of suspense, Brian De Palma. The film has shocking moments that will make your mouth gape open, so be prepared. This is, all in all, a scary yet fun film.

Also recommended films by De Palma: SISTERS, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, CARRIE, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, BODY DOUBLE, and RAISING CAIN.


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