Richard Stanley’s career has been haphazard at best. He started making videos for the weird goth-cowboy British band Fields of the Nephilim (my favorite band of all time, I say to no one’s interest). He then went on to make oddball horror movies, including Hardware and this weird item, Dust Devil. From there, he went on to try to make The Island of Dr. Moreau, which became an incredible fiasco. He was fired from the set just a few weeks into filming but sneaked back on and even made it into the movie as an extra, disguised as one of Dr. Moreau’s monsters.
Buy Dust DevilMore lately, he’s made a well-received adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s Colour from Outer Space. He was going to go on to more Lovecraft adaptations, but his career was upset by some allegations of an abusive relationship with his co-screenwriter.
Whoever is at fault for his myriad professional and personal problems, it cannot be argued that Stanley isn’t an interesting filmmaker. And Dust Devil is a consistently interesting if confounding film. Whether it’s consistently entertaining, or makes any sense at all, is another matter.
The basic outline of the story is hard to relate because it is so basic. There’s a dude who’s killing people. He meets them, takes their Polaroid, and that marks them are his next target. He’s apparently not human, but some sort of spirit called a “dust devil.” He murders a woman and mutilates her in a grotesque fashion.
Meanwhile, a woman drives away from her husband. She hooks up with the Dust Devil, and might be her next victim… but isn’t, because… it’s hard to say. The movie has so many aspects at odds with itself as a story, it’s hard to keep track of them.
The Dust Devil, played by American Robert John Burke, has some supernatural powers, but they’re ill-defined. He’s being hunted by a Namibian detective, who is plagued by nightmares of his own son’s death. How does that connect to the serial murders? Never becomes clear.
But he’s friends with an African shaman who tells him how to find this supernatural murderer. He connects with the lost woman’s husband, and they become partners… until they’re not. He handcuffs the husband to a car in the desert and goes off against the Dust Devil on his own. Why? Not clear.
The story of this film is a spectacular mess. Which is a shame, because there are scenes of genuine power, and the cinematography and staging are frequently gorgeous. Director Richard Stanley films his odd, nonsensical plot with an immense sense of style and image crafting. His camera is restless, and in several scenes, it moves in unexpected ways. Helicopters and cranes must have been cheap in Namibia in the early ’90s, because this film makes great use of both in creating dynamic shots of characters and landscapes. Whatever one has to say about the story, this is an absolutely beautifully shot film. And it makes the most of its vast desert landscapes and the rotted-out old towns it’s mostly set in. So much of it is interesting to watch that’s it’s a shame it doesn’t have a clearer story.
This newly restored release on 4K makes the most of the film’s incredible beauty. It has a filmic, period-accurate look with incredible clarity. This odd, interesting film has never looked this good. And that might be reason enough to give it a watch, though the story never fully reveals itself. The mix of supernatural, serial-killer thriller, psychological drama and African political film has the feverish quality of a nightmare. Indeed, Richard Stanley says in the commentary the movie came to him in a dream. That’s what it often feels like, for better, or worse.
Dust Devil has been released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray by Kino Lorber Studio Classics. Both the director’s and theatrical cuts have been restored, and are on both the UHD and Blu-ray disc. The UHD has a new commentary track by Richard Stanley.
The Blu-ray contains the commentary track, and some archival video extras. These include “Dust Devil and Other Misadventures” (36 min), a documentary about Stanley and the making of this film; “Original Storyboards” (11 min); “Original Polaroids” (2 min), and some trailers.
