Buy it... if you seek a hidden gem in the ranks of John Williams' fully symphonic expressions of brute force, not to mention some very keen adaptations of Bernard Herrmann's most challenging styles into a more accessible form.

Avoid it... on the 2003 limited album if you are content with the 1990 CD's presentation of the London re-recording of Williams' rearrangement of the score, despite a stunning remastering of that performance for inclusion in the 2003 set.

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The Fury: (John Williams) The period of the middle to late 1970's ushered in a heightened popularity for religious, paranormal, and telekinetic horror films. It was perhaps the natural progression away from Irwin Allen's straight forward natural disaster epics, which were on a steep decline by the end of the decade. After the immensely popular, sequel-spawning classics of The Exorcist and The Omen, director Brian DePalma followed with another outlandish, head-spinning tale, The Fury. The plot of John Farris' self-adapted story continued the fad of these kinds of supernatural tales down the path of absurdity, as the concepts continued to stretch all reasonable lines of logic in search of renewed audience acceptance. The Fury in particular represented nearly the end of this genre at the time, proving that despite an impressive cast of young and old stars, audiences had seen enough people explode by the mental will of another person. That said, few viewers can deny that the conclusive scene of the film, in which Amy Irving uses her supernatural abilities to literally blow up John Cassavetes from the inside, isn't at least morbidly entertaining. At a time when pop culture action flicks made a habit of showing the same buildings and vehicles explode over and over again from ten different angles, the idea of using the same technique for a nasty, not-so-spontaneous human combustion, complete with gallons of fake blood and a head that pops up like a cork, yielded a fittingly ridiculous conclusion to the film. DePalma himself had directed the Hitchcock-inspired film Obsession a few years earlier and had the pleasure of employing the great Bernard Herrmann for the project's score. While Herrmann's talents would have been perfect for The Fury, he had unfortunately just passed away at the time, leaving a void in the composing industry for a new master horror composer to fill. In between his assignments to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Superman and living in the limelight of Star Wars from the previous year, John Williams enjoyed some lucky coincidences which ultimately led to a very emphatic offer from DePalma for his involvement in the film.

Both men realized that the score would exist in the shadow of Herrmann's ghostly presence, especially with DePalma's insistence that the former maestro's style be integrated into Williams' music for the picture. Williams responded by composing a masterful score with elements from his own thematic tendencies and motifs that are clearly direct tributes to, if not extensions of, Herrmann's body of work. Some film music historians argue that the period of 1977 to 1982 represented the best years of Williams' career, a time when the composer was at his highest level of motivation and talent. The Fury indeed reinforces that point of view, proving to be very effective and riveting both in the film and decades later on album. Nothing was spared in the scope of the score for The Fury. Williams' music is guided by a horrifying title theme, heavy on brass and very weighty in its brutal structural repetitions during the supernatural acts in the film. The waltz format of this theme, best heard in "Main Title" and "Gillian's Vision," is driven by both its elegantly swaying progressions on floating woodwinds and emphasized pounding of the theme's key by bass elements in a fashion that would gain more recognition in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The three of four full, rolling outbursts of this theme in the score represent some of the composer's most engaging material of the era, foreshadowing the harrowing tone of A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The lighter performances of this idea, as well as secondary themes, highlight tender moments between main characters, but even this material never entirely escapes the tense brass undertones. For fans of those moments when Williams unleashes ungodly noise and ruckus, The Fury offers over twenty combined minutes of horror music that will shake your room and cause your neighbors to call the police. Unlike Herrmann's often shrieking horror cues (when sustained), Williams refuses to approach the same level of challenging dissonance for long periods in the work. His emphasis on strong melodrama of character heart and personal struggle cause even the most horrifying cues in The Fury to have a bittersweet beauty to them. In these regards, his tribute to Herrmann's cascading woodwinds (and even an octave-alternating theremin in the explosive climax) becomes almost an improvement on Herrmann's touch. Most importantly, Williams extends this classic sound into a brutal, menacing realm that actually makes it more accessible for modern listeners.

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The "Gillian's Power" cue, with that memorable theremin employment (which is among the few elements of the ensemble to really stand out in that noisy scene in the film), is the culmination of all the Herrmann techniques employed in the score. But after Cassavetes has exploded and DePalma dwells on the final shot of his head bouncing off the floor, Williams shifts into accelerating, bass region ensemble strikes that are not only pure Williams in style, but would eventually inform the climactic moment of Jurassic Park. It's arguably the most powerful moment of the entire score, and it's interestingly one true to Williams' own style. So influential a score had Williams created that bits of ideas in The Fury would turn up over the next twenty years in other supernatural or sci-fi thrillers. The title theme, in its ominously fluttering and steady eloquence, is a clear predecessor for Williams' own wondrous Hogwarts castle theme for his three Harry Potter scores. The quick, consecutive brass blasts in the bass region, meant to emphasize the beginning of a measure of music with the most powerful note possible, would show up again extensively in James Horner's Brainstorm and Chirstopher Young's Hellraiser II. Wavering, tense, and harsh brass tones, slowly alternating between two octaves of quivering notes, would serve as a foundation for Don Davis' elusive theme for The Matrix. Williams' insertion of carnival music, synthesizers for added mystery, the theremin, and the abnormally strong use of bassoons are all elements that would be used in similar ways by other composers for years to come. On album, the music has existed in several forms. Williams re-recorded the score with the London Symphony Orchestra for the LP album (eventually copied onto a 1990 CD), and this recording remains superior in his altered arrangements and sonic depth to the actual, film version recorded in Los Angeles. The original score (as heard in film) was released in 2002 as part of the limited Varèse Sarabande Club, with only 3,000 copies available. That limited album, however, also includes an incredible remastering of the LSO recording as well, making for a fantastic set. The remastering included with the limited Varèse product indeed sounds spectacular, with all the vibrant clarity of a current recording. The original score includes some more precise performances in certain parts, and is an equally interesting experience. Overall, no Williams or Herrmann collector should be without this demonic score, and in this case, the price of the limited album is definitely worth it.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Score as Heard on the 1990 Varèse album: ***
Score as Heard on the 2003 Varèse Set: *****
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.73 (in 67 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.7 (in 319,558 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.