Dust Devil
February 15th 2007 00:34
Richard Stanley, a South-African native who moved to the UK, garnered cult intrigue following his debut feature Hardware (1990), a dodgy, low-budget sf-horror about a small rogue robot creating havoc in an apartment. He followed this with Dust Devil (1992), inspired by a dream, about a supernatural desert drifter who ritualistically murders innocents in an effort to gain the evil karma to shift him back into the spirit world.
The movie has had a very chequered past. When Stanley delivered the distributors, Miramax, his 120-minute cut they were horrified (for all the wrong reasons). They seized control of it and released it as an 86-minute serial-killer-in-the-desert flick, and that was about it. Gone were all the mystical references and almost entirely absent was the investigating local cop who believes the killer to be a shape-shifting demon borne from native myth.
Then the production company went broke and the film fell into a limbo (how diabolically appropriate). Over the years people either saw bootlegged copies or could only wonder what Stanley’s original vision must have been like. Then a couple of years ago Stanley located the original negative and managed to convince the original investors to allow him to personally finance a 103-minute director’s cut. Finally viewers could see a clear cut of his original vision.
Still, this Final Cut is a flawed and uneven film. But there’s more than enough interesting elements within its swirling vortex to provide the viewer with lasting provocative imagery and vaguely interesting existential ideas about magic and myth, demonology and pagan ritualism.
What works extremely well in Dust Devil is Stanley’s use of the desert landscape, sunlight and shadow, and the floating iconographic imagery of black magic and the supernatural, including spirals and flame. The gaze of an owl is used repeatedly, no doubt as the metaphorical lone predator with black infinite eyes. These visual elements alone propel the film, despite the vague plodding storyline, while the sub-plot of Ben’s own disintegrated marriage and his reoccurring nightmares add further weight to the movie’s reliance on hallucinatory spiritualism.
There is some good special effects make-up work utilised for the smatterings of gore (especially a sensational shotgun blast to the head!) and the cinematography is excellent, but the direction and editing is patchy and there is frequent use of foley work (key sounds dubbed in later) which is unconvincing.
Grating of all is the film's acting. It's no good. Only Zakes Mokae really delivers a convincing performance. Chelsea Field is a frustrating, shallow lead, while Robert Burke glares on in his best Clint Eastwood crinkled stare with a few monotone lines of dialogue, but he simply doesn’t command enough menace to warrant the audience’s fear of him and anxiety for Wendy. And as for Rufus Swart as the husband, he’s a complete waste of time and space.
Here is the trailer for the Final Cut version, which works as a great short film (Warning! It contains a visual spoiler):
* images on this page are courtesy of www.dvdmaniacs.com
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
By the sounds of your review I may like this extended version, might have to borrow it.
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
But is it scary?
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Damo,
no it's not really that scary ... the acting isn't good enough for a start (and there's too many dissolves for my liking) ... but its dreamy ... in an unsettling kind of way ...