Very Cool!!!

Just what I expected

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I have to grade this as average, but its quality was inconsistent. I thought the actors did a great job and that the visuals were very well done. However, the script was a bit of a mess, lagging at times and skipping at others.The plot of the movie is that a spirit from the other side, trapped here in flesh form, needs to perform a ritual of killing many people before it can go back home. The people object, naturally. There are some other details related to the plot, but some of them are completely superfluous, like the husband of the girl or the social commentary on South African culture. Too much of the former and too little of the latter.There were some very nice scenes in the film, scenes that make be feel this could have been a lot better had the director tried more. I know the movie is considered one of his successes, but I wonder if he could have done better.In conclusion, this is an interesting film to watch, but more for its mood and symbolism than its story or other qualities.

Some films are the stuff of legend because they are beastly gory, others because of the impact they have on the scene. And one film is a legend because it has been under the radar for far too long.'Devil delivers almost-epic horror. But when it first hit video stores in '93 it was barely noticed. Although heavily butchered by the Weinsteins, there has always been something deeply special about 'Devil. Underground horror circles were the first to celebrate it, and it was only a matter of time before it started building its number of loyal aficionados. Various versions came and went, however, it wasn't until '07 that the quest for Richard Stanley's true version has come finally to an end. The difference between the messy '92-deconstruction (US-Cut) and the '07-reconstruction (Final Cut) is night and day – it almost feels like two different movies. Maybe not in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality.Horror is supposed to thrill, and 'Devil does it fantastically. But if Guts & Gore is what you want – then this isn't the type of movie you're looking for. Oozing psychedelic Sergio Leone vibes from every pore, 'Devil hijacks horror for 108 minutes and breaks out in a flamboyant direction bordering on mythical existentialism. A fuzzy menace hanging over the Namibian desert like an oppressive cloud gives Devil its own unique flavor.By the way, it's also a political testament to the dark past of South Africa's apartheid. A world crumbling down during the filming of 'Devil, and a world that thankfully no longer exists.Fair warning here: This one gets trippy. Guess a lot of people find it too vague, too fluffy, too spacy. And I can understand that. Personally, I love spiraling into this Nietzschean and symbolically overloaded world. I have always admired the catchy noirish touch. In marked contrast to pretty much every David Lynch labyrinth, Devil is both clearly and darkly, epic and ambiguous, unorthodox but familiar.In an age where everything seems like it's been done 100-times before, 'Devil arguably has no equal. The imagery, the music, the attitude – this film still is magic. Hell yeah, this is the Blade Runner of mystery. Watch accordingly!

This comment is related to the director's cut of "Dust Devil", one of the biggest film disappointments I have had in recent years, in part due to the story surrounding its release: it creates expectation and anticipation, making one think that this is another case of American distributors ravaging a fine work. Perhaps the 87 minutes version produced by Miramax is execrable (if -as they say- everything supernatural was cut, and the role of policeman Ben Mukurov was reduced), but I can understand the reaction they had. No one can justify damaging a work, but at least we can understand the intention to "fix" what was seen as bad. Later director Richard Stanley was able to rescue the negatives and finish the film as he wanted. Unfortunately the result is not good. Starting with the casting, there is actor Robert John Burke as a villain that is more repellent that frightful, wearing a long coat, perhaps to make a connection to Sergio Leone's westerns: considering that this is a demon conceived in African soil, the entity had a bad wardrobe consultant in Hell, as he looks like a product of globalization, a Texan by way of an Italian costumer. Then you have a female character (played by Chelsea Field) that alternates between being a nasty, racist, promiscuous woman, and being plain dumb: even by the standards of horror film, what young woman would give a ride twice to an entity that, when she picked it up the first time, literally vanished from her moving car, and who was nowhere to be found when she got off? But this lady does, and by minute 59 she is seduced by the entity, dances with the dust demon and then they have sex, anticipating the ending of this silly tale even to a spectator who is a non-expert in demonic possession. However "Dust Devil" has the visual virtue to make you feel that you are watching something magnificent: besides the splendid locations in Namibia, Stanley deserves an applause for introducing pseudo-mythic elements -very nicely evoked by late John Matshikiza, as a film projectionist, in dreams as well as in what is left of a drive-in cinema in the desert; or proposed by Marianne Sägebrecht, as a forensic surgeon- that create an atmosphere of terror associated with the ancient religions that had good and evil divinities related to Nature. On the other hand, there is an interesting subplot pointing at political and social unrest. But in the end this is an underdeveloped aspect of the story that makes little contribution to the story, and that seems as "local color", comparable to the camera flourishes (including aerial shots or travelings in and back) that add to nothing. The key character of Mukurov (Zakes Mokae), the only one who seems to have a strong purpose and a credible dark past, gets lost in all the mumbo jumbo and dusty events, until the film reaches its predictable end.

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.