The Fury

Ultimately, The Fury is a film about pre-pubescence by a director whose work had finally reached the level of confidence reflecting a post-pubescent talent. The best of both worlds, baby, and barely legal. Read full review

Some films, though very much of their time in style and approach, are timeless in their ability to unnerve. De Palma’s The Fury is one such fine genre exercise. Read full review

The Fury is a stylish entertainment, fast-paced, and acted with great energy. Read full review

The script (John Farris's adaptation of his novel) is cheap gothic espionage occultism involving two superior beings--spiritual twins (Andrew Stevens and Amy Irving) who have met only telepathically. But the film is so visually compelling that a viewer seems to have entered a mythic night world; no Hitchcock thriller was ever so intense, went so far, or had so many "classic" sequences.

The Fury features Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes as adversaries in an elaborate game of mind control. Director Brian De Palma is on home ground in moving the plot pieces around effectively. Read full review

It's strange energy - sexy, morbid, not quite human. There's an awful lot of blood in the movie and a lot of flesh, but there's little flesh and blood. The Fury is the work of a brilliant, droll, sadistic puppeteer. [20 Mar 1978, p.93]

Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of SF and horror. Read full review

The plot’s too fitful, but a stirring John Williams score ties a lot of the pieces together, and De Palma and Farris’ emphasis on children’s misplaced trust in authority figures helps The Fury resonate even when the story peters out. Read full review

This attempted follow-up to Carrie almost entirely lacks its predecessor's narrative thrust and suspense. Read full review

Still reeling from the success of Carrie, De Palma turns this 1978 film into an endless series of shock effects, some of which work but most of which don't. Read full review

The Fury was directed by Brian De Palma in what appears to have been an all-out effort to transform the small-scale, Grand Guignol comedy of his Carrie into an international horror/spy/occult mind-blower of a movie. He didn't concentrate hard enough, though. Read full review

The film bogs down, however, because of De Palma's penchant for technically slick but overblown action scenes that call attention to themselves as virtuoso set pieces instead of advancing the narrative. Read full review