Veterans of the Psychic Wars

Although The Fury (1978, directed by Brian De Palma) is the director's dumbest film--which is saying something--it has its compensations. Prime among them is the director's film sense, which is entirely separate from the story on screen. De Palma knows where to put the camera and when to move it. He uses slow motion and sound (or the lack thereof) to impart a sleek maximalist commercial veneer to the film. He also knows how to be cruel to the audience, like he's in some parasocial BDSM relationship with them. The Fury is also a mini-summary of his career at that moment. It's a psychic thriller a la Carrie, a paranoia thriller like Sisters (complete with sinister experiments at shadowy institutes), and it's a conspiracy film that anticipates Blow Out. It even has that wonky sense of absurdist anti-establishment humor from his earliest films. Then it blows it all up in one of the biggest what the fuck climaxes in film.

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