Friday, October 01, 2021

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 1: The Fury (1978)

Welcome the first day of the countdown! Let's ease into this month-long marathon with something...ridiculous.

I think Brian DePalma has only made one movie I can say I genuinely love, and that's Carrie. Still, the fact that I have not seen all of DePalma's earlier works itched at the completist part of my brain. Can you really say a director is terrible if you don't see the majority of his work?

Yeah, you probably can. But I still decided to watch The Fury.

And just...wow. It's bad. Like, maybe one of his worst? DePalma uses everything in his usual arsenal: slo-mo; a Bernard Herrmann-esque score; awkward attempts at humor; acting that is just tonally...off. The more I see of his other films the more I wonder if Carrie is only saved by the presence of Sissy Spacek who, for whatever reason, managed to give a purely human performance in a film surrounded by scenery chewers. She balances it out, so it all works.

But every performance in The Fury is just...nuts

It's almost saved by the most insane ending ever, a 'splosion caused by telekinesis, something David Cronenberg would do a few years later in Scanners. Wow, for once DePalma did something first!

 
 I rented The Fury on disc, but it's also available to rent online from several platforms.

5 comments:

Caffeinated Joe said...

I thought this was weirdly paced, and characters vanish for long stretches of the film.

Aimee said...

Need to see this one finally! When I was younger (okay maybe still) I always wished I had Darth Vader mental powers, but if I had seen this film, my hopes would have been slightly different!

Rain said...

@Aimee - It's terrible, but still entertaining...

Lady M said...

I thought Body Double was an awfully good DePalma film. What did you think of that one?

Rain said...

@Lady M - Yes, I've seen Body Double....

And that's all I'll say about that 😆