Dust Devil
A serial killer is on the loose in South Africa, a particularly nasty one. He kills his victims as he makes love to them, and he picks them with apparent indiscrimination, male, female, young, old. He takes souvenirs. What the policeman in pursuit doesn't know is that this particular killer is not quite human, but a spirit-being who's been lured into a trap of flesh, and is collecting souls in order to "power his escape" from our world. A young wife on the run from her abusive husband picks up the hitchiking killer and sets into motion a chain of events that will irrevocably alter her life and the lives of those around her.
Richard Stanley's Dust Devil is a remarkable horror movie, one of the best I've seen, and that's saying something. It's especially remarkable in light of the general lack of inspiration in Stanley's previous effort, Hardware.
Stanley has put together a highly original film, and put it together well. The story telling is tight and the performances are unaffected and compelling. Robert John Burke is particularly good as the eponymous demon, and his performance is well supported by Chelsea Field and Zakes Mokae, as the runaway wife and the pursuing policeman respectively.
Dust Devil is full of fine, small touches: the killer and his prospective victim dance with one another to the weird but soulful voice of Hank Williams singing "Rambling Man"; the climactic scenes, which take place in a deserted town being swallowed up by the desert, are truly terrifying. In general, Stanley makes excellent use of the bleak Namibian landscape.
Be warned, though: this is an extremely graphic movie at points, and is not for the easily revolted. If you like horror films, however, this is an absolute must-see.
Dust Devil may be hard to turn up. It's in many video stores for rental, including Blockbuster, and the VHS tape can be purchased (I paid "rental prices" for my copy, pretty steep, but you can get it for a mere pittance, eight bucks) from Amazon. It's well worth the effort (and the expense, if you're a serious fan of the genre) to check this film out.
