The Fury

(1978)**1/2

Betrayed by his best friend and former colleague Ben Childress, retired government agent Peter Sandza makes it his Rambo-type mission to rescue his son Robin from Ben’s clutches. Following an unexpected surge of violence in the opening scene of the film, Robin is kidnapped off an Israeli beach and Peter is attacked and presumed dead. It turns out that Robin is a powerful telepath and Ben has kidnapped him to aid in his ‘psi’ research for weapons development. With me so far? Peter’s only connection to his son is another telepath, Gillian, who joins Ben to help him locate his son and wrest him from Ben’s evil training school. The plot is so much more complicated than this description, but I’m already exhausted trying to explain it.

Like Scanners The Fury was another movie I often heard about growing up but never watched. Unlike Scanners, which also has telekinesis at the center of the story, The Fury is an incoherent mess with a few striking visuals that are not enough to save the disjointed, muddled story. Once or twice I walked out of the room for 30 seconds and I found myself rewinding because I was immediately lost. Like Scanners there’s action at the beginning and end but not much else. Unlike Scanners I wasn’t the least bit entertained. Here’s a funny quote from an old New York Times review,

“It's also, in fits and starts, the kind of mindless fun that only a horror movie that so seriously pretends to be about the mind can be. Mr. De Palma seems to have been less interested in the overall movie than in pulling off a couple of spectacular set-pieces, which he does. He leaves the rest of "The Fury" to take care of itself”