After CARRIE hit big, Brian De Palma catapulted into A-pics (ex-studio head producer, tripled budget, ‘name’ stars), but did himself no favors in reusing telekinesis, bloody eruptions & paranormal violence in his plot. Reception, mixed at the time, now looks unduly harsh, the film has aged nicely. Kirk Douglas, in arguably his last good film*, an agent for some top-secret anti-terrorism organization, is left for dead after a surprise Mid-East attack covertly setup by fellow agent John Cassavetes. Turns out Kirk’s kid, Andrew Stevens (sporting a cleft chin, natch) is loaded with ESP potential and wanted for study/development. Meanwhile, in a parallel story track, Amy Irving, another natural psychic talent, is found by Douglas before she too is spirited away by the agency. Hoping he can use the girl to locate his missing son, Douglas goes into action. And that’s where the fun begins as De Palma sets up a series of dandy action sequences with added Pop-Art surface sizzle from lenser Richard H. Kline. The best sequences run like Rube Goldberg contraptions (very Blake Edwards/PINK PANTHER), with Kirk on the run in tenement buildings wearing nothing but his skivvies or forcing himself on a couple of woebegone cops (Dennis Franz, Jack Callahan) in a car just itching to be destroyed. The rest of the film can’t live up to this kinetic cluster bomb, but has just enough plums in the pie to give De Palma the wiggle-room he needs. Fun, with less directorial homages than usual. De Palma left that side of things to composer John Williams whose score glances toward the recently deceased Bernard Hermann who’d worked with De Palma on SISTERS/’72 and OBSESSION/’76.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Douglas stuck with De Palma for next year’s largely ignored comedy HOME MOVIES (not seen here). With a painfully low IMDb score, it’s probably worth a look.
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