All This Exercise is Making Me Hungry
The Fury (1978)
directed by Brian De Palma
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The fuzzy green font on the DVD definitely makes it look like The Fog, and something in my mind said "haunted house." I was wrong, but it is a horror film, by way of a nearly unrelated thriller. The action begins in "Mid East," 1977, but before I'd barely recovered from one of the best kidnappings on record, the camera cruises two teenagers on an 87-degree summer day along the lake in Chicago.
Does anyone make movies like Brian De Palma? Hitchcock was his hero, but there's too much suspicion of the average stranger in those films. De Palma's protagonists might be paranoid, but they live in a world of crowded sidewalks with a thousand nameless faces. You don't worry that one of them is going to step off the boardwalk with a gun; like you, he's too busy watching the pretty girls walk by. Or having a drink by the Mediterranean. Or bragging about the stereo in his car.
Did I mention that this is a comedy? That Kirk Douglas is the star, that he runs after trains in Chicago in his boxer shorts, that he requisitions a police car with shoe polish in his hair? This is either his funniest role or his sappiest; The Fury becomes more maudlin the deeper you get into the terror, which is built on self-pity and lines like "telepathy is a timeless form of communication." John Williams' score almost makes it sound like De Palma is mocking Steven Spielberg. Both directors are saps for absent fathers, which is too bad, since Kirk chomping on a breakfast link while sweet-talking a senile mother-in-law should be dad enough for everyone.
directed by Brian De Palma
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The fuzzy green font on the DVD definitely makes it look like The Fog, and something in my mind said "haunted house." I was wrong, but it is a horror film, by way of a nearly unrelated thriller. The action begins in "Mid East," 1977, but before I'd barely recovered from one of the best kidnappings on record, the camera cruises two teenagers on an 87-degree summer day along the lake in Chicago.
Does anyone make movies like Brian De Palma? Hitchcock was his hero, but there's too much suspicion of the average stranger in those films. De Palma's protagonists might be paranoid, but they live in a world of crowded sidewalks with a thousand nameless faces. You don't worry that one of them is going to step off the boardwalk with a gun; like you, he's too busy watching the pretty girls walk by. Or having a drink by the Mediterranean. Or bragging about the stereo in his car.
Did I mention that this is a comedy? That Kirk Douglas is the star, that he runs after trains in Chicago in his boxer shorts, that he requisitions a police car with shoe polish in his hair? This is either his funniest role or his sappiest; The Fury becomes more maudlin the deeper you get into the terror, which is built on self-pity and lines like "telepathy is a timeless form of communication." John Williams' score almost makes it sound like De Palma is mocking Steven Spielberg. Both directors are saps for absent fathers, which is too bad, since Kirk chomping on a breakfast link while sweet-talking a senile mother-in-law should be dad enough for everyone.
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
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