Sidney Joseph Furie (born February 28, 1933) is an Canadian film director and screenwriter who's worked mostly in the United Kingdom and the United States.
He's most infamous for directing the notoriously terrible Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), which kneecapped the Christopher Reeve Superman series, as well as three of the four Iron Eagle movies. Those two don't really sum up the whole of his career that. Before Superman, he was a fairly versatile filmmaker with 20-odd feature film credits dating back to the late 1950s, many of which were considerably acclaimed. These included the Michael Caine film The Ipcress File (probably THE Stale Beer spy movie of the 1960s), the Billie Holiday music Lady Sings the Blues, and the horror movie The Entity (a.k.a. the one with the ghost rape) - which Martin Scorsese called one of the scariest films of all time.
He also directed The Boys in Company C, a gritty Vietnam War movie starring a young R. Lee Ermey that predated Apocalypse Now and was cited by both Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick as inspiration for Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, respectively. Early in his career, he made a few memorably cheesy British horror films like Doctor Blood's Coffin and an early Leatherman film titled The Leather Man.
Since the '80s, he's stuck mostly to low-budget direct-to-video action and B-movies, though he does occasionally slip some more highbrow fare including two Spiritual Successors to Company C.
Filmography:
- 1958: A Cool Sound from Hell - A semi-autobiographical drama about a beatnik getting mixed up in the Toronto underworld. This one's notable as the second-ever feature film shot in Toronto, and is quite a striking snapshot of the city at that time. It was long thought lost until be rediscovered and restored in 2014.
- 1961: Doctor Blood's Coffin - First British film
- 1961: The Young Ones - A musical starring Cliff Richard
- 1965: The Ipcress File - Nominated for the Palme d'Or and won Furie a BAFTA for Best British Film
- 1966: The Appaloosa - Western starring Marlon Brando and John Saxon, the latter nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
- 1977: The Boys in Company C
- 1980: The Jazz Singer - Furie was the original director but was replaced midway-through by Richard Fleischer, and all his scenes were reshot.
- 1986: Iron Eagle - Furie would go on to direct every entry in the series, with the exception of Aces: Iron Eagle III.
- 1987: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
- 1991: The Taking of Beverly Hills
- 1992: Ladybugs - Sports comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield
