Post by Fickle81 on May 21, 2007 22:32:56 GMT -5
Richard Stanley was a genre director in the early 90s who had a minor hit with the movie Hardware (also known as MARK 13). After he had success with that film,he got the clout to do another very different horror film called Dust Devil. However,unlike Hardware,the production of the film was problematic,specifically in post. The production company that was putting out the film,Palace Pictures,went bankrupt just after they had the film cut from its original 120 minute cut to a 95 minute one. The film was then purchased by PolyGram,who soon seemed to not give a shit less about the movie. It was only after the success of Silence of the Lambs that the overseas distributor of the film,Miramax,decided to release it to try to get the same type of success,but not before cutting it down again to 87 minutes. It was then cut EVEN MORE for the U.S. version down to 70 minutes.
Needless to say that with all the cutting,many of the movie's original scenes have been permanently lost. However,in 1993,the original negative and audio were found and Stanley himself,with money out of his own pocket (£44,000),created the difinitive cut of the film that most resembled his vision. This was dubbed The Final Cut (also known as The Director's Cut). This final cut has been somthing of a holy grail for cult film fans for sometime. Subversive Cinema finally released a limited edition (I believe only 10,000 copies,but don't quote me on that) in September of 06 that has this long awaited final cut on it.
Ironically,Stanley's production problems would continue when he was hired to direct the 1996 remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau (he also wrote the screenplay),only to be fired after 1 day of shooting (thanks to Val Kilmer) and replaced by John Frankenheimer. That movie is universally reguarded as being terrible,most likely due to the troubled production. Since then Stanley has only been doing documentarys,but he now has not 1,but 2 features he's working on.
Sources:
www.everythingisundercontrol.org/nagtloper/ddevil/ddevil2.php
www.everythingisundercontrol.org/nagtloper/moreau/m_index.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Devil_(1993_film)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrPSuTEISpg#
Now that we've got the history lesson out of the way,on with the review. First things first,I personally was rather let down by Hardware...don't get me wrong it looked great,the soundtrack was awsome,and the kills/gore were top notch...however,the execution of the plot was rather weak and I didn't much care for the design of the cyborg. So Stanley had quite a bit to prove to me in terms of this film. Did he come through? Read on to find out:
Minor spoilers ahead:
This movie is a lot of things. It's a supernatural horror film...but it's also a western...it's also even a road thriller...and even still it's a surreal film in some reguard. The film has 3 seperate plots all tied together by a mysterious serial killer traveling in the deserts of South Africa...1 is the adventure of a battered house wife trying to escape her abusive husband,the second is said husband trying to find her,and the third is a police officer investigating a series of ritualistic murders connected to the desert roaming killer,who may be more than what he seems.
The cinematography in the film is dope. So many creative,and dare I say it,innovative shots. Wait till you see the shot of the hand where you can literally make out the bones underneath the skin.It also has quite a few neat tracking shots in it. The mis en scene is great as well. Wonderful lighting and locations. The dead bodies in the morgue give an otherwise un-horrific scene (it's used as part of the investigation subplot) a creepy vibe. There are many scenes like this both in location set pieces and sound design (see next paragraph) that keeps the aura of dread constint all throughout the film,even in places of downtime.
The soundtrack is fantastic as well. It's just as good,if not BETTER,than Hardware's score. There are also some really great instances of sound design and mixing as well. There are times when you can hear the ambient air in and around the location of the scene,which gives you a very unsettling feeling extremely similar to the David Lynch film Eraserhead (the same type of sound design is used in that film all the way through as opposed to every once in awhile in this one).
The film is solid in the creepy department as well as the technical aspects,but where it does some ot its faultering is in the writting. First,the plot with the husband trying to find his wife was REALLY under developed,and with the way it eventually plays out,it might as well have not been in the film at all. Second,the narrator/witch doctor served as a really bad exposition device. The interesting thing is that the same kind of "how the fuck does this character know everything thats going on?" exposition plot device was used in another film I just recently saw,The Abandoned,which was actually co written by Stanley. Go figure. I surely could have used a lot less of his narration in the film as well because it revealed too much of the mystery that was going on too soon.
Then there was the cop investigating the whole thing. He really didn't do a good acting job in portraying the character he was playing. Allow me to elaborate...he was very likeable,however,he was SUPPOSED to be playing a cop that was guilt ridden over his son's death. Besides the couple of nightmare sequences he had,he seemed way too happy go lucky to be guilt ridden,which actually makes those nightmare sequences,as well as the guilt ridden character device that accompanies him,rather useless. I also had a problem with people's willingness to pick up or keep the killer around even after he suddenly takes an unwatned picture of them for his personal stash. Any normal person would have been creeped out by that and probably would have dumped his ass out of the vehicle immediatly.
All the faults aside,the movie is significantly better than Hardware. The technical aspects and constint aura of unease make the film worth the price of admission alone. Then theres also some of the ambiguity of the film,like where the killer came from. Eventhough I could have done without the witch doctor,he does pose a nice clue for the film by sitting inside a spiral made of rocks (the clue being to the film's structure in itself). And theres also the ending,which is not only ambiguous but definatly ends on a down note at the same time.
If only Richard Stanley cleaned up his writting,he's be an absolute film making force to be reckoned with.
4/5