The Fury

A sort of blown-up companion to 1976’s Carrie, The Fury follows Peter Sandza (Douglas) as he searches for his psychic son, Robin (Stevens), who’s been kidnapped by one of those under-explained, villainous agencies that Hollywood just can’t get enough of. Eventually he’s helped by Gillian (Irving), a teenager with a telepathic link to his son.

It begins with a marvellous set-piece: Sandza, Robin and an agent named Childress (Cassavetes) are relaxing at the beach. Suddenly, a group of terrorists arrives, firing at everything in sight. But wait: amid the carnage, there's Childress, sending Robin to safety and then talking to one of the ‘terrorists’. It turns out the whole thing's a macabre hoax, designed to eliminate Sandza and fool Robin, whom Childress wants to experiment on (something to do with ‘bioplasmic universes’ and ‘psychotronic relationships’).

In a way, the opening is a synecdoche for the film itself; but instead of Robin, it’s we who are being fooled. The Fury is about as ludicrous as De Palma gets, but aesthetically there’s so much to admire (particularly John Williams’s score and Richard H. Kline’s cinematography) that you just might fall for it.