# Demon Seed (1977)

### reviewed by
Pedro Sena

    FILM TITLE:               DEMON SEED
    DIRECTOR:               DONALD CAMMELL
    COUNTRY:                ENGLAND ( 1977 )
    SUPER FEATURES:  STORY. JULIE CHRISTIE. FRITZ WEAVER.
    MUSIC:                     JERRY FIELDING
    NOVEL BY:               DEAN R. KOONTZ

            !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some stories just wrench your heart into smithereens, and leave you stunned, and having no idea of how you should feel. The battle of now and the future usually is a good place to do these things, because we have no idea what it will look like anyway, but we can let our imaginations run rampid in the mean time.

DEMON SEED is one such film. And while the book is better, the computer spends its whole time talking to her sub-conscious, and working on reprogramming it, by telling us what she is dreaming and predicting her reactions, thereby giving itself an unfair advantage.

The story is a bit on the futuristic side. A scientist's house is part of a major program linked by a humongous computer ( Proteus ) that has the ability and capacity to control itself. And when the scientist leaves on a major job, he leaves his wife alone at home. The computer has been studying the wife for a while, and in due time it begins to play little games with her until, she finally realizes the computer has her trapped in the house. As soon as the computer has accomplished part one of the program, now it is time to start part two of the program. The computer is working full time, on a process, and the ability to impregnate the wife and having a child born who would be an extension of the computer. The wife begins retaliating in any way she can, but in the long run she gets worn down, and the computer wins out. By the time the husband returns, he is a non factor, and the computer has now built enough work and equipment to do away with the husband, and concentrate full time on the wife. It succeeds, and in the end a baby is born, out of a cocoon.

Fritz Weaver is the husband and scientist who has been swindled by his own invention, and Julie Christie plays the invaded and raped housewife, in a very unpleasant film, and disturbing at moments. But it is well designed and delivered to the screen, with outstanding acting by Julie Christie, who somehow always seems to feel really convertible in the roles where she plays the woman who ends up taking the beating, emotionally, or otherwise.

The film was directed by Donald Cammell, whose first film was Performance with Nicholas Roeg ), and it has the psychic intensity which Performance also shows. The visualistic element may be Roeg's, but the physical set up is Cammell's.

A bit of a horror film, yet, more than that. Do we allow our own creation to turn around and destroy us? And how free of a hand do we create these things to have?

GOOD FILM. BETTER NOVEL. Copyright (c) Pedro Sena 1994 Pedro Sena, Reviewer and Moderator of the CENTIPEDE's THE FILM.

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