Leofwine_draca Richard Stanley's second film after his android-on-the-loose debut HARDWARE is a disturbing, over-long tale of a magical serial killer on the loose in Namibia. To be fair, it's an original concept, and Africa isn't exactly the place you think of when it comes to horror films. The use of the isolated desert landscapes (just like in WALKABOUT) is good, and the artistic nature of the film is also a major plus.However, once again Stanley gives us a bunch of uninteresting, unlikable characters, and we don't really have too many feelings about them. The film is also far too long, and there's not a lot going on to retain interest, apart from repeated artistic scenes and images, which to be fair are nice to look at but there's not much depth. There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo involving witch doctors and the like. Robert Burke brings a certain level of complexity to his character, but the final revelation is somewhat disappointing. Chelsea Field is a tough heroine but never makes us feel for her character, while Zakes Mokae is rather good as the policeman investigating.There are a number of gory shocks along the way, such as a dream where the policeman has his internal organs pulled out by a burnt skeleton, or the severed fingers, or the moment where the hitch-hiker's head literally explodes, in a scene worthy of Cronenberg's SCANNERS. If you're into arty films like this then you'll probably enjoy DUST DEVIL, but I'm afraid they're not really my cup of tea. There can be no understating the disturbing nature of the film, however, and it played on my mind afterwards.

Joseph Sylvers Never before have I seen a director's cut that's made so much of a difference to my perceptions of a movie. My first viewing of "Dust Devil" was the Wienstein cut, with about half an hour amputated for American audiences. My first impression was of a dismal boring serial killer thriller with supernatural overtones in a novel setting, featuring lots of half baked characters, and a serious shortage of suspense, horror, or general interest. What was cut from the film basically seems to be anything that would have been remotely interesting. The narration is subtracted, there is less music, less repeated shots of the moon, sky, and desert landscape, less peripheral views of the political and social context of the time and town, less time spent with the characters, a few dream sequences gone entirely, and a great sequence towards the end that takes place in a makeshift movie theater and recalls Ingmar Bergman's "Persona"(where for a brief momentum the movie itself falls out of joint), all get left on the chopping block in the US release.My first impression was terrible, but my second viewing of the longer cut was like seeing the film with fresh eyes. Dust Devil is the story of an ancient demon who doesn't so much possess his host as it does become trapped inside of them. The demon only seeks to break out of the material world, an act he can only achieve through ritual murder. In his own words, "there is no good or evil, only spirit and matter. You are full of light, and I only have to make a small incision to let the light out.I should have done this days ago, but I get lonely, forgive me I wont keep you waiting any longer".The demon can only kill the hopeless; those who truly have nothing and are either suicidal or have given up on life completely. He is attracted to a town called Bethany in the Namibian desert in south-west Africa, that is slowly collapsing on itself, to the point where even the sheriff has been paid to leave. The town is literally drying up, and the dust is as much an ecological terror as the demon that feeds on the he despair and hopelessness breeding in the town. The demon played by Robert John Burke (who was also the gruff Nordic mythological beast in the underrated "No Such Thing".) however is not the main feature of the movie. Dressed in his Sergio Leone cowboy trench coat and hat as a classic man with no name, "a violent wind which blows from nowhere"(though Stanley's final cut, even gives him a brief scene of pathos). The plot involves a South African white woman named Linda (Chelsea Field) who has just left her husband in Johannesburg. We learn she was once a student radical but has lost her passion to a lifeless marriage, and is driving aimlessly towards "the sea" or towards suicide, whichever comes first. Linda picks up Burke, the nameless handsome hitchhiker, or imagines she does anyway (reality around Burke seems to collapse at times), who has just finished off two previous victims near Bethany. The murders call for investigation, and the sheriff contacts Ben (Zakes Mokae) an old African detective who lost his son (and had subsequently divorced from his wife), in some undisclosed "violence along the border". He drives through the desert listening to his ex wife's "whale song" recordings she forgot to take with her 15 years ago (there is a continuous juxtaposition of ideas and sounds of the sea with the barren desert). The two murders (there are only four in the film, and 3 depicted on screen), are ritual in nature, and so Ben enlists the help of my favorite character for narcissistic reasons, Joe the one eyed town shaman and projectionist at the drive in who narrates the film, and was scheduled to show "Bird With A Crystal Plumage" and "Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires" as double feature, before the trouble begins. He tells Ben that in order to stop the killings he will need to "stop thinking like a white man, and start thinking like a man" in order to open himself up to the rituals needed to trick and capture the evil spirit. Meanwhile Linda's husband is trying to track her down, failing at every turn, and only getting in the way of everything he touches as a bumbling and arrogant white male South African (not unlike Wikus from District 9, but sans redemption). What makes Dust Devil worth watching is the Stanley's milking the landscape and the sky for all it's shamanic glory (so we may better understand the demon as a force of nature itself), and Burke's alternately charming, cold, sensitive, or demonic performances. Ben and Linda are the main characters and much of the movie is devoted to bringing them together and showing their mutual alienation and despair and how Ben's dedication to the murder case and Linda's picking up Burke the hitcher seem to give them both new sensations of purpose and meaning. The ecological blight of the dust, the economic famine of the town, and the psychological desperation of the characters and even Burke's desire to escape the material plane, are layered over (and form a commentary on) each other. The few moments which recall most directly a horror movie come few and far between the scenes of poetic narration, police procedural, and eye fulls of the Namibian desert and the dust devils(mini tornadoes) which dot it's landscape. Do not watch this unless you can get the Final Cut, its the only one worth seeing.

Christopher T. Chase So you know how I feel about movies I've never even heard of. When I saw that DUST DEVIL: THE FINAL CUT had not one or two, but FIVE discs in the set, I was really skeptical. The ONLY reason why I was willing to cut it any slack was because of the director, Richard Stanley. I do remember seeing his sci-fi/horror/action cult favorite, HARDWARE, back in the good old days of VHS, and it kicked MAJOR butt-cheeks back then.Here's the deal: apparently, DUST DEVIL went through the usual headaches and hardships during filming, Bottom line: a finished 'director's cut' of this movie as of now, does not exist. What Stanley and his co-conspirators had to do is piece together a rough version, using additional scenes pulled out of a work print. It's very similar to what had to be done when a "completed" cut of THE WICKER MAN was reconstructed.The result is an erratic, but visually stunning piece of work, but it goes pretty deep into the metaphysical and supernatural aspects of native folklore in the country where it's set...Africa, particularly South Africa. Translation: people in this movie spend a lot of time talking, including the narrator. Sure, lots of stuff happens, but there's also a lot of time in between those events, so if you don't feel like putting up with a lot of dialogue, you might want to save this film for another time.Robert John Burke (the ROBOCOP series, OZ and RESCUE ME) plays the title character, who is also called "The Shapeshifter." If he seems very familiar to you, he should be. He's a figure that runs through a lot of the mythologies of different cultures and has been used to represent both Good and/or Evil in many popular books and movies. But make no mistake about it - this 'Dust Devil' ain't here to help anybody but himself. He's a demon trapped in our world in human form, feeding off the souls of the lost and the lonely who have given up on everything but life itself, gathering strength until...well, as far as I could tell, it was never all that clear WHAT he was trying to do - return to his shadow world, or eventually take over ours. Anyway, Burke plays the role really well, and he's believable as a charismatic force of evil who can convince his victims to stick out their necks while he pulls out his shiny axe...or knife, in this case. As it happens, there are two souls on a collision course with Mr. DD: a police detective, Ben Mukurob (THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW'S Zakes Mokae) whose wife left him after the tragic death of their child, and a woman named Wendy Robinson, (Chelsea Field of PRISON and THE LAST BOY SCOUT), who has just left her clingy husband, Mark, (Rufus Swart), after he finds out she's been having an affair.With his job the only thing he has left to look forward to, Ben dives into the investigation of the murder of the Dust Devil's latest victim with a vengeance. Adding an extra layer of substance to the story are indicators that the story takes place not long after the fall of apartheid, but the residual effects can still be seen in Ben's grudging relationship with the uniformed officers he supervises, and the friendship he has with his immediate superior, Captain Beyman (William Hootkins, everybody's favorite "red shirt" from HARDWARE and a little flick called STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE). When symbols at the crime scene indicate that the murder has undertones of ritualistic sacrifice and black magic, Mukurob consults a shaman he knows named Joe Niemand (John Matshikiza), who warns him that forces are at work that he shouldn't be screwing with...unless he's ready to go all the way. Meanwhile, Wendy runs into a mysterious, Western-garbed stranger hitching rides. She picks him up, and at first, she's attracted to the handsome and unusual "dude from Texas." Until some freaky stuff happens that indicates he's not quite who she thinks - or is that hopes? - he is.There comes a point where he reappears to her, when you figure that a) this Wendy chick is one screwed-up piece of work, or b) this guy really does have a power to attract his victims beyond all reason. Because most women I know at this point (and you'll know it when it comes) wouldn't care if this guy was Brad Pitt - they'd be beatin' feet out of there faster than Usain Bolt going for a one-minute mile.Wendy's husband Mark goes looking for her, and he runs into some trouble that has nothing to do with supernatural events of any kind. But eventually, the paths of all three people will cross at some point and all of them will encounter the Dust Devil...though not all of them will live to tell about it.I wish I could say that including the shots from the work print does the movie justice, but the transition between clean, sharp cuts and the fuzzy, murky segments from the dailies doesn't allow the movie to weave the completely seductive and creepy spell that Stanley was ultimately after, and it makes you wonder what the finished film would've been like if he'd been able to gain all the resources and money he needed to give it that proper 'polish.' As is, though, it's still pretty heady stuff. Casual fanboys sniffing out a "Triple-B" movie (Babes, Boobs and Blood) may want to wait for the next Eli Roth extrava-GORE-za, and leave this one on the shelf. I'm just hoping that whatever he does next, Stanley will be given a proper budget and the leeway to see at least one more film through to a completed AND finished version of what he envisions.

ametaphysicalshark Part horror, part serial killer thriller, part supernatural Western, and featuring some unforgettable surrealist sequences, "Dust Devil" is one of the most distinctive and under-appreciated horror films there are, and as good as its original cut was, Richard Stanley's final cut improves drastically on it, making "Dust Devil" a must see film.The technical aspects of "Dust Devil", Simon Boswell's haunting score, the beautiful look of the film, and the excellent work with the sound, and Stanely's creative and intelligent direction make this film one of the most aesthetically pleasing of the early nineties. The film's screenplay may not be as good, but outside of a few serious faults it's also very good. I can't pick on the acting either, some of which is excellent, the rest of which is serviceable.Any film with a concept as original and intriguing as "Dust Devil" and one that is executed this well deserves to be seen, and now that the final cut has been released and can be relatively easily found, there's no excuse not to.8.5/10