The Fury Showcased Chicago's Steamy Summer Of '77

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 19, 2012 9:00PM

For famous cinematic summers, Chicago doesn't really rate. Sure, The Blues Brothers is patently a summer affair and is appropriate for summertime viewing, but the stickiness of the sweltering city isn't really thematized as it is in movies like Do the Right Thing, Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon or Rear Window, say. One depiction of a hot Chicago summer on the silver screen that sticks with us is Brian De Palma's somewhat forgotten-about 1978 supernatural spy thriller, The Fury. The plot concerns a teenage Amy Irving, who discovers that she has dangerously powerful psychic abilities and that the doctors who promise to help her are actually more interested in turn her into a weapon. Very un Professor Xavier-like if you ask us.

While not the greatest movie—it is stylish and capably acted but suffers from a terminally poor script—The Fury was memorably shot on locations that included vintage North Avenue Beach, the late great Plymouth Hotel and the Old Chicago Shopping Center and Amusement Park. Not to mention The Fury contains one of the best chase scenes filmed in the city.

So as we endure a hot streak the likes of which we haven't seen since 1977, a look at The Fury will show us exactly what that sweaty Chicago summer of '77 actually looked like, as that is precisely was when it was filmed. The "Filming Location" video lines up the shots of the movie with the same places as you could see today. We wish these recreations shot last fall had been created during the summer (North Avenue beach seems a bit barren, for example), but will forgive the filmmakers due to the obvious effort to get the locations pretty exact and the cheeky re-enactments.

So 2012 Chicago, take a look at the hot summer you're trying to dislodge from the record books. If you like seeing the locations revisited, other local entries in the series include Home Alone and The Blues Brothers.