Verdict
Summary
Richard Stanley’s entrancing supernatural serial killer odyssey Dust Devil is a one-of-a-kind road trip movie that looks and sounds like no other, leading to a virtually apocalyptic conclusion. Filled with sparse, unique looking locations and limited dialogue, but eerily and startlingly scored by Simon Boswell (who also scored Stanley’s Hardware), the film resonates for cult film aficionados and for horror movie fans.
Plot:
A demonic drifter performs murder rituals in dying towns across African deserts.
Review:
The open road is where the Dust Devil (Robert John Burke) is most at home, and his sojourn has put him in the middle of the Namib Desert of Africa, which is a wasteland of nothingness and harsh winds. He wears a long duster and a wide-brimmed hat and hunts for single people who have lost their spark for life, and he hitches rides, and then brutally and ritualistically murders them, chopping their bodies to pieces and then burning what’s left and taking with him a final photograph of his victims and some of their fingers. Then, he moves on to the next dying corner pocket of the universe and repeats the process. When he hitches a ride from an abused woman on the run named Wendy (Chelsea Field), he sees a glimmer of life clinging to her soul through her eyes, and while he sleeps with her in dingy motels along the wasteland highway, he prolongs his murder ritual until he absolutely has to (when she discovers that he’s a serial killer just in time), but she escapes his clutches, leading to a chase through the desert. On the Dust Devil’s trail is a detective vaguely aware that he’s hunting a supernatural killer, and on Wendy’s trail is her abusive, but penitent husband. All roads will converge upon the Dust Devil in the middle of nowhere.
Richard Stanley’s entrancing supernatural serial killer odyssey Dust Devil is a one-of-a-kind road trip movie that looks and sounds like no other, leading to a virtually apocalyptic conclusion. Filled with sparse, unique looking locations and limited dialogue, but eerily and startlingly scored by Simon Boswell (who also scored Stanley’s Hardware), the film resonates for cult film aficionados and for horror movie fans. If you love The Hitcher, then you’ve found the perfect companion piece to that. A personal favorite of mine, Dust Devil is a bewitching piece of work, and I wish Stanley had more movies. Plagued with post-production meddling by the Weinsteins, the film is magnificent in the director’s cut version. The first time I saw this was on VHS, which was the compromised, heavily edited version, and even then I could see a masterwork.
Kino Lorber’s new 2-disc 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray edition of Dust Devil looks and sound amazing in a new 4K scan of the 35mm camera negatives, and you can choose to watch the edited version, or Stanley’s cut, which is obviously the way to go. The disc comes with an audio commentary by Stanley, an archival (2006) interview with Stanley and Boswell, original storyboards and Polaroids, the trailer, a slipcover, and artwork that can be reversed.
