gcsman In 'Carrie', Amy Irving played a well-meaning friend of the iconic title character and the only survivor of the famous prom-night massacre that closed that film. Here in The Fury, she gets to play The Girl With the Power herself, as a another teenager coming to grips with frightening telekinetic and psychic powers that she never wanted. I might have rated this movie higher if I'd seen it closer to its original date, but a few decades later it certainly looks dated. And it can't quite seem to decide what it wants to be: either (a) a suspense/action tale (in which case the plot ought to be tighter and flow better) or (b) a supernatural/horror thriller (in which case the special effects fall short, at least by modern standards). So overall it ends up being a bit of an incomplete mix. But the odd thing is that even for the time (late 70's) it has a dated feel to the style and pace of the scenes and dialog. As other reviewers have indicated, the only way this film worked for me was to imagine that I was watching a Hitchcock production from the 1960's or even 50's.The actors too all seem to be a bit out of sorts, even the star veteran Kirk Douglas. None of them seem to mesh well together. The main interest for me was to see Amy Irving at an early career stage. Though she was billed 5th in the cast after the more well known veterans, she's actually on screen more than any of the others and in some sense it's her character's journey that can be seen as the central part of the plot. Rather than the claustrophobic high-school setting of Carrie, however, here the girl with psychic powers is plunged unprotected into a bewildering outside world of political intrigue and secret institutes where she does not know who to trust. Irving does all right here with the rather uneven script, but in 'The Fury' she is clearly still learning the acting business. Even in her very next movies after this one ('Voices', 'The Competition'), she is visibly more mature and has distinctly more command of her acting skill. Frankly I think it took a while for her just to grow into her voice: her smooth, low-pitched alto seems a bit out of place for the 17-year-old that she's supposed to be playing here. But she's got great screen presence and is a treat to look at.Overall, this movie felt like a good effort for the time, but harder to watch now.

Prismark10 Brian De Palma is an infuriating director. A man who makes visually interesting films that also have a flawed narrative. Some thing just never fully click in a Brian De Palma film despite his attentive knowledge of all things Hitchcock.When it does go right he can deliver big popcorn films and ironically his best regarded film critically and commercially have been big screen adaptations of television shows. The Untouchables and Mission Impossible.The Fury follows up Carrie as it deals with people who have telekinesis powers.Kirk Douglas who even though was in his 60s looks in great shape who plays a shadowy government agent whose psychic son, Robin (Andrew Stevens) is kidnapped in a staged incident in the Middle East.John Cassavetes who is Douglas's fried and colleague is behind it all. He is trying to get people with psychic powers together to use them as weapons.Amy Irving is Gillian, a young woman with similar psychic abilities as Douglas's son. Both Douglas and Cassavetes want to control her. Douglas wants her to use her powers to find her son.The film starts of intriguing enough and we see Irving coming to terms with her powers and using her abilities to unravel people with ulterior motives such as Charles Durning playing a doctor in an institute.Douglas is good as the dogged father who has been betrayed by his own agency and there is some nice comic scenes with two cops whose car he kidnaps.The film is just too damn long and Andrew Stevens is not good enough as Robin. When he reappears in the film he is just a damn brat and what is it that he has wanting to destroy Arabs in that fair ride when in the beginning of the film we see him in the Middle East and reluctant to go back to America.De Palma uses several set pieces to keep the film going and we have his usual visual tricks that he has become known for including an explosive finale.Its mixed with uneven pacing, tone and stupid plotting. As an example we see Stevens levitating and then next Douglas is trying to save him from falling.A flawed horror-thriller with some uneven performances but still visually arresting.

SnoopyStyle It's 1977 Mid East. Ben Childress (John Cassavetes) pretends to be sending Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) and his son Robin (Andrew Stevens) to Chicago. Instead he sets up an attack. Peter barely escapes but Robin wrongly assumes that his father was killed by Arab terrorists. Childress is gathering children with psychic abilities to train as US secret agents. In 1978, Chicago teen Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving) sharpens her mental abilities in the Paragon Institute headed by Dr. McKeever (Charles Durning). Peter is tracking Gillian as a possible way to get his son back with the help of his naive girlfriend Hester (Carrie Snodgress) who works at the institute.The movie follows two tracks. Amy Irving's track reminds me of Carrie for more than one reason. Kirk Douglas' side feels like a spy action thriller. The back and forth between the two sides diminishes some of the tension. Director Brian De Palma keeps the movie going at a good clip but it doesn't necessarily all work.

gavin6942 A government agent (Kirk Douglas) is determined to come to his son's rescue, when a sinister official kidnaps him to harbor his extremely powerful psychic abilities.I find it interesting that Brian De Palma chose this as the follow-up to "Carrie". I mean, really, another film about young people with psychic powers? But it is actually quite different in spirit and acts as more of a pre-cursor of "The Dead Zone" and "Scanners".We not only get the screen debut of Daryl Hannah, but an excellent score from John Williams that was highly praised by critic Pauline Kael, who called it "as elegant and delicately varied a score as any horror film has ever had".