 Hello and welcome to another edition of Trash or Treasure. Movies that are either so bad, they're bad, or they're so bad, they're good, or on paper they're good, but they're bad. Yeah, exactly. But to start things off, what are we drinking? Les Marchand's East India Porter. Today we're going to be doing 1978's The Fury. Directed by Brian De Palma, and he did Phantom of the Paradise. This was based on the book by John Ferris. The movie stars Kirk Douglas, along with John Cassavetes, and William Finley, who is in Phantom of the Paradise, as the Phantom, is in this as well for a little bit part. So The Fury starts off on this beach setting. We get introduced to Peter and Robin, and Peter is Kirk Douglas, and he plays Robin's dad, Ben, who we learned is Peter's old work associate. There's all these aerobes and everything that start coming to shore. He pulls out all these machine guns and starts blowing everybody away. Like, what the fuck? There's also like a movie camera, there's a guy filming all of this. I thought they were making a movie. Yeah, in the movie, right? But they're not. So Kirk Douglas, Peter, he sort of dodges onto this boat and the boat just blows up, like swimming to shore after he's all alive. They kidnap Robin because we learn later that Robin is psychic and he's got these special psychokinetic powers. What the hell just happened here? It's crazy. It's like, what the fuck? We're then introduced to this girl, Gillian. She's in high school. There's a one girl. One girl with those glasses, like clown glasses. Like, holy Christ. She has powers, too. And she actually, like when she touches somebody, she can make them bleed out of like their orifices, you know, the one girl through her nose. Some higher-up people kind of find out she has these powers and they take her to this institute where they can study her. Gillian starts having visions of Robin, who was the kid who was kidnapped in the beginning of the movie because he was staying at this institute as well. In the meantime, Robin's dad, Peter, is still alive and trying to find him. He finds out through like one of his, like, informants. Yeah, some contact. Contacted, yes. It's also like his girlfriend. Yeah, they're all screwing the back of that van. They're like in that parkade, like, what the hell? He finds out from her that there is this psychic girl. Okay, I'll use her to help me find my son. I'll find Robin and there's a big climax at the end. By describing it, it sounds kind of cool, but it also sounds like a bit of a shit show, right? But first, what are the good things about this movie? One of the biggest things that's pretty obvious in this movie are the actors. There's a lot of big name actors in this. The story is, it's a good story. It's a good idea for a movie. The effects in this movie are top notch. They're used sort of sparingly too, right? It's not all over the place and blatant. Whenever someone bleeds out of like their nose or one girl and it bleeds out of her fingertips, it looks cool. It's like, how do they do that? How do they get blood to run out of her like? Cuticles. Yeah, cuticles. Yeah, it's really like cool. Must have been a fake hand, but it didn't look like it. There's that one scene where the woman is spinning. Her head is all kind of breaking apart too at the same time. You see the blood splattering on the wall. That part is fucking awesome. That's great, yeah. But that's pretty much all we can say that's the good points of this movie. So we're gonna take some time to rip down this movie a little bit. Structured in such a way where you're always scratching your head like, what, like when it starts off with that scene on the beach and suddenly people are being blown away and this kid's kidnapped and then Kirk Douglas is getting blown up and then he's swimming back and like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, all these Arabs coming to shore like an invasion too and there's some guy filming it like, what the hell? And then suddenly Kirk Douglas is just like breaking into these people's apartment and dying his hair with that shoe polishing. And he's all jumping off that building and clinging onto that sign. Like Spider-Man and stuff like that. It's all over, he's way too old. What the hell? A movie that's pieced together wrong. It seems like everything's in the wrong order and in the wrong place. Exactly. Characters you should care about, you don't because you're not seeing a full development there. They start to develop it and then their characters like cut out for most of the movie then. Like Kirk Douglas, like the first good chunk of the movie is all about him trying to find his son and suddenly you just don't see him again until like near the end of the movie. You kind of forget about him. And then Jillian like the main female character, you really don't even give a shit about her. You should kind of feel something for her that oh the poor girl, they're using her, they don't care about her. Same with John Cassavetti's character, he's always popping in, is she ready yet? We're ready for what? You don't even know what the hell she's there for. You don't hate the bad guys and you don't even like the good guys. And you're supposed to. You don't care about anybody. They're just a part where she's bawling her eyes out and Kirk Douglas' arms because she doesn't want him to leave her alone. He'll smack her. He'll smack her and you don't even care. Robin's character too, right? Show him in the beginning, then he's taken away. By the time we do get introduced to him as like a full on character, he's already an asshole. He's been like changed by these guys. You don't see him being changed or you don't care that he's changed. Exactly. The tone of this movie is all over the place. Exactly. And it goes hand in hand with the structure of it. And a lot of scenes are too long. Oh yeah. Like they could have been edited down to be half as long as what they are in the movie. Could have cut half hour of this movie easily and had a good solid horror thriller, you know? Right. Like you have the car chase scene. Oh, he's not needed at all. With Dennis Franz there. Most of that wasn't needed. And then he's like, what's the deal with him driving into the ocean there or whatever? He's like, tell him to follow me. He all drives into the ocean. And he's all freezing, making that phone call after her. He's like, I need you, baby. Well, you're the one to drove into the fucking ocean, you stupid asshole. He's had one slow motion scene where she's escaping from the institute and the whole thing's in slow motion. And it's like five, 10 minutes long. Yeah, it's way too long. All this nice pleasant music when it should be like action packed and you should get your heart thumping and like, OK, is she going to get out? De-lee-de-lee-de-lee. Yeah, you should be on the edge of your seat. It should be tense and fast paced. Oh man, is she going to get away? These guys are watching. You probably could have gone and got another beer and taken a leak and come back to the couch and it'd just still be me-de-lee-de-lee. The ending. It's climactic at the same time as anti-climactic. Right. And it also kind of doesn't make much sense given the characters. Yeah, so at the end, he's on the roof and he's trying to. Robin. Yeah, Robin. He's like trying to help his son, like his son's going to fall and his son's all climbed. Like, why are you climbing the shit on your dad who's trying to rescue you? I know and he doesn't want. The kid doesn't want to be rescued at all. So the son dies? Yeah. Would you think because he's got all these psychic powers that can make people float? Couldn't he just make himself float? Couldn't he just fly away? Yeah, like what the hell? And then to him? Yeah, then it just kills him. I have all this hard work of trying to find your son, all these hardships you've gone through. And he just kills himself. Like, I could see you being upset and everything, but Jesus, then the girl's laying in bed, then we see John Cassavetes and starts to turn it against him. Yeah, he all rolls over that couch all in slow motion. And then the movie just ends with him exploding. Yeah, then it just ends and explodes and that's it. It's like, where's the closure? Like, I'm laughing my ass off, but I'm like, I don't think I should be like, I don't think they want me to laugh right now. But it's such a silly, like it's a good, like it looks great. It's a good effect and it's a cool part, but I don't think it's the way they should have ended the movie. Where's the closure in it? This movie had like great reviews. People like super liked it. The critics liked it for some reason. And then the old diploma, before this, he does Fan of the Paradise, which is like a great movie, like a masterpiece. And that movie bombed and critics hated it. They're like this fucking thing. I'd love to recut this movie and kind of make it like, and structure it properly and get rid of a lot of shit and just kind of, here's a good hour and a half thriller, you know? So unfortunately, this movie will have to rate as trash. Both of us rated trash, even though on paper it should be fucking great. I think DiPalmo is just maybe on Coke or something. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it's a bit of a drug induced. Like in the editing room is like, whatever, just take the scene, put it there. Guy was pissed drunk or something while he was doing it. They left the slow motion machine on. After when they're watching it, it's like, ooh, I didn't mean it. I was supposed to be like that. Or just kind of, don't say anything, you know? But if you have a different opinion or the same opinion, please let us know in the comments. And until next time. Keep drinking.