Best movie of this year hands down!

Sorry, this movie sucks

I'll tell you why so serious

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I just seen the longest version available of Dust Devil and I was looking forward to finally see it but at the end I wasn't that happy because to be honest, it wasn't my cup of tea. I had seen Hardware (1990) simply because Carl McCoy (Fields Of The Nephilim) had a role in it. Hardware I did like and Dust Devil you can feel the same atmosphere so typical for director Richard Stanley but it's the story that let me down.I was told that it was full of gory moments and it do has a few of those moments and it even got news footage of dead bodies but it's a slow moving flick. It starts well with the dust devil slashing his victim and cutting the body in pieces, the effects used are all well and I thought that it would be a hell of a ride but all I saw were nice shoots made by Richard and somehow I was lost with the story and was looking to nature. Now and then it did offer the mentioned gore but by then for me it was too late. Nevertheless it's a flick with much following and loved by many but for me it had too many boring moments.Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

South Africa's all-time horror classic Dust Devil (1992) spins a genuinely chilling tale of a supernatural shape-shifter roaming the Capetown area in the form of a particularly vicious serial murderer (played by Robert John Burke). With police in pursuit of the phantom slayer, the bodies pile up in this atmospheric genre bender (thriller and western) and Chelsea Field peels down most pleasingly, as does Terry Norton.Conflict between the production company and the director (Richard Stanley) resulted in several cuts to the film, and, as a result, it seems a bit disjointed.

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.

DD is not a run-of-the-mill horror film, and that certainly can't be a bad thing. A serial-killer premise, but fantasy-based i.e. not your typical "Copycat" type of garbage. When you make your serial-killer a demon, then you have all the excuses you need to make him near-invincible - unlike the plethora of modern-day horror thrillers in which the very human killer seems to have God-like powers. Set in Namibia, which helps give the film a more-or-less unique look and feel. The movie does tend to move very slowly in the first hour, but the decent soundtrack and the visuals mostly make up for it. At times I couldn't get past the funny South African accents.Just one noteworthy objection: why didn't they cast the first female victim as the star of the movie and killed off "Wendy" at the beginning instead? The former is much prettier...I didn't quite buy the casting of Marianne Sagebrecht as a pathologist. She is your classic Putzfrau or fat housewife.