A woman leaves her husband and alone drives off into the desert where she meets a drifter that she picks up. What she doesn't know, but eventually will be aware of, is that the handsome stranger is a shape-shifting killer who preys on the weak.
Spaghetti western mixed with African spiritualism - it might sounds cool (well, actually it doesn't), but is just as much fun as studying math, and since math blows, so did this movie. I seriously don't know what this was supposed to be and can't for my life understand how someone could make such a dull film, but here it is and I suffered all the way through it. We're introduced to some cowboy type of guy who is kind of a drifter out there in the dusty old desert. He puts his head on the road and listens with the calm music playing in the background - ok, so the guy's a mysterious fellow, got it. A car comes a long and we soon see the cowboy dude getting picked up by a woman that's in it. They drive to her place, sleep together and then he kills her and burns her house down. This also might sound exciting (not to talk about one helluva first date), but was actually among the dullest things I've seen on screen and I could just feel my eyelids getting more and more heavy. God damn, only ten minutes had gone by and things were about to get worse, A LOT worse.
Dust Devil was first released in 1992, then apparently there was a lot of fuzz about a certain company wanting to cut the length of the film which originally was 120 minutes long. It was cut down to 86 minutes and then director Richard Stanley managed to get a 95 minute version released, but still with the film being cut into different version depending on which country it was to be released in. It's quite strange and cutting a movie from 120 minutes down to 86 minutes is a lot, so it's easy to see why the guy wasn't happy about it. The version I saw was 104 minutes long and I think I would've preferred the 86 min version instead, as I'm sure it would've been just as rewarding. Subversive Cinema released a new version of the film not too long ago which is a five-disc set that features a helluva lot of extra material. But since I didn't enjoy the movie one bit, I have no plans of watching the extras either.
 
As the film rolled on with its dusty scenery, I'd have to admit that it had some strong visuals and looked quite all right, unfortunately for this one, it's just not enough to make everything seem all right. The story of the film is not too bad either; about a demon who's trapped inside a man's body and who's also trying to escape from it. But the pacing of the film was just beyond slow which dragged everything down and after having watched it for a while, I actually had to struggle staying awake. It takes place in South Africa and there are a lot of different accents to be heared in the film - something that was quite irritating and became even more so the longer into the film one got. Despite what others may say, even though it looked nice and all that, it was just way too boring.
While I have nothing against slow-moving films, this one was just beyond that and story-wise it wasn't strong enough either to keep one's interest up. Richard Stanley might be talented when it comes to visuals, but when it comes to everything else, Dust Devil just doesn't cut it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1992
DIRECTOR: Richard Stanley
WRITING CREDITS: Richard Stanley
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Robert John Burke, Chelsea Field, Zakes Mokae
COUNTRY: South Africa, UK
RUNTIME: 104 min
RATING: 2/10
Dust Devil Website/IMDB Click here
Dust Devil Trailer Click here
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