DUST DEVIL

South Africa, 1992, 108 minutes, Colour.

Robert John Burke, Chelsea Field, Zakes Moakae, John Matshikizi, Rufus Swart, William Hootkins.

Directed by Richard Stanley.

South African director, Richard Stanley, had made a science-fiction film, Hardware, not received critically well but becoming a cult film. He followed this with Devil Dust but encountered production difficulties, the production company failing financially, the film recut for an American audience, but the director raising the finance and releasing his version of the film in 2008.

The film was made in Namibia, taking advantage of the various landscapes of this country, adjacent to South Africa, long vast deserts, and the famous sand dunes. The film is based on some Namibian myths, especially the interaction between the supernatural and the world, a character who becomes overpowered by the supernatural, bringing people to judgement and destroying them, and, in this film, especially unfaithful women.

The character is played by American actor, Robert John Burke, dressed in hat and long cloak, wandering the Namibian landscapes, arriving at an isolated dying town. He lies on the road, is given a lift by a woman, a sexual encounter and his killing her, taking her fingers, going back to the house and setting it alight, the police investigating the dead bodies.

At the centre of the film is a woman escaping from the clutches of her demanding husband, driving into the desert – and a similar encounter with Devil Dust, but overcoming him and escaping, and his continued pursuit through the dunes.

There is a local policeman, who lost his wife 15 years earlier after the accidental death of their son. He investigates, encounters a friend who used to be a projectionist at a drive in, who knows his thrillers from programs of those years, but who narrates the story of the mythology and the Dust Devil, the two of them eventually confronting the Devil himself.

The film intends to have an atmosphere of weirdness, which it does, aided by the desert and strange landscapes, the town of the townspeople where the town is in decline, the railway through it, strange houses in the desert, deserted and abandoned houses, as well as the behaviour and character of the central character and his effect on the women – and the fighting back.

Richard Stanley spent four days on the set of The Island of Dr Moreau, the version with Marlon Brando, all kinds of troubles and his being fired – although his being awarded the Razzie for worst screenplay of the year.

Stanley continued to make documentaries but was successful in the horrors and genre once again in 2020 with Color from Outer Space.