Another very well made yet bad movie by the same director who has a great long history on making similar masterpieces!i mean, come on, if parapsychology is such a serious topic (which it isn't really but Hollywood loves to make it look that way because it sells well to the sheeple!) then what are those 'fun' scenes in the movie where the main protagonist of the story escapes his hotel room and raids some elderly people's tiny apartment in such a bizarre yet comic manner? or the police officer is so worried about 'his new car' which he loses eventually plus a few similarly silly scenes!?yes, para-whatever powers was well shown in Carrie but this one ...NO!

I have a rule against watching any movies about people with "special powers." The presence of Kirk Douglas and Brian dePalma's directing made me suspend the rule. I wish I hadn't. This is basically a very silly movie with long stretches of tedium. I watched it to the end more out of curiosity than any involvement with the characters. I wanted to see how they wrapped up the many implausible plot threads. The central character, Robin, has psychic powers and has been captured and held by the usual nefarious secret government agency. But it is never made clear what this agency's purpose is. The many psychic scenes are basically silly and often confusing. There are long seemingly pointless stretches in the "Paragon Institute." dePalma seems to be trying to outdo Sam Peckinpah in sheer quantities of blood splashed around the set. This one isn't worth your time.

Following on from the success of CARRIE , Brian de Palma gives us another movie about psychics and telekinesis - except this time, it's mixed up in a taut thriller concerning Kirk Douglas hunting, and being hunted by, a secret government agency who have kidnapped his son. This is an example of de Palma at his best, with lots of style and Hitchcockian moments, plenty of action, and some real show-stopping scenes. While the film may feel episodic in nature, with a number of plot strands eventually tying together, a stellar cast help to make this one unmissable.Kirk Douglas is the good-natured hero, a role he had played a hundred times, so as you would expect he's naturally good at it. Andrew Stevens appears in a minor yet pivotal role as his son, and is scarily convincing. Carrie Snodgress lends solid support as Douglas' lover, while Charles Durning - an actor usually playing the hero's partner in films like COP - is surprisingly good in an understated role as a doctor. However, acting honours should go to Amy Irving - frequently moving as she struggles to come to terms with her new-found psychic abilities - and John Cassavetes, who steals his scenes as the chief villain of the piece.From the unexpected and shocking opening - where a beach resort is the scene of a violent shootout - right up until the truly epic finale, this is a film which does everything right and keeps you riveted to the screen. While the plot may be a typical one, seen in the likes of King's FIRESTARTER, it's what de Palma does with it that makes this watchable. Good scenes include a car chase through fog-bound streets (watch out for a very young Dennis Franz as one of the drivers), another moment which highlights just what slow-motion was made for and obviously took a long time to get just right, and the climax, which brings a whole new meaning to the term 'tragedy'.Horror fans will no doubt be delighted by the wealth of bloody scenes and glowing eyes on offer, climaxing in a shocking moment where Fiona Lewis' bloody body is twirled through the air like a broken puppet. But of course, this is just to make way for the real finale, where chief villain Cassavetes gets his just desserts as Irving makes him literally EXPLODE! This effect, shot from thirteen angles by de Palma, is simply awesome. It would make the film worth sitting through even if the rest of it was worthless, which of course it isn't. Created by Rick Baker, the special effects work here wasn't even matched by Cronenberg's later SCANNERS. These moments and more make THE FURY a must see for movie fans.

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.