The Fury (1978) starring Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgress, Amy Irving directed by Brian De Palma Movie Review

The Fury (1978)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Kirk Douglas in The Fury (1978)

Split Personality

When he discovered his son Robin (Andrew Stevens) was special, secret agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) took him abroad to get away from the attention and get an understanding of his psychic/ telekinetic ability. With a professor in America getting in touch with Peter to bring Robin back to America to attend a special school where other young people have similar gifts they are getting ready to return. That is when Robin is abducted and for Peter it is a case of betrayal as his fellow agent Childress (John Cassavetes) is behind it. With it appearing that the secret agency which Peter works for behind things as other agents working for Childress come after him Peter tries to track down young psychic Gillian (Amy Irving) to help him locate Robin.

"The Fury" feels like two different movies helmed by two different directors and crews which then get weaved together in frankly an uneven manner. It is the major problem with "The Fury" which on paper sounds like it should work with this story of psychics being used for sinister means and a father desperately trying to track down his son who was abducted for having psychic abilities. In fact "The Fury" should be a simple movie but ends up a troubled one because of its jarring nature.

Amy Irving in The Fury (1978)

What that means is that on one hand we have Peter trying to track down his son who was abducted by his colleague. Now it seems that like with many other Kirk Douglas movies of the late 70s and early 80s the script may have been altered to add more action scenes for Kirk to show off his physique. But Kirk also brings a slight jokey nature to the role as well which makes it feel at times more of a spoof agent movie. It probably was entertaining back in the late 70s especially for any 15 years old who managed to sneak in to see it but it feels wrong now.

Then on the other hand we have a take on "Carrie" as we have young Gillian struggling to come to terms with her psychic abilities especially when it seems that anyone she touches has something nasty happen to them, usually consisting of them bleeding from various orifices. It is extremely different to the Kirk Douglas side of the movie which is why it ends up jarring. Having said that there is an entertaining twist which shows up at the halfway mark involving the character of Dr. Jim McKeever who is an expert in dealing with psychic children.

What this all boils down to is that "The Fury" on paper could have been a good movie but in the end it feels like two movies shoe horned together which keep on crashing against each other as they don't have consistent feel going on.


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