The Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series looks back at Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil, starring Chelsea Field and Robert John Burke
A little bit ago, I discussed Hardware from 1990 and how it became a little lost to time. Today’s movie is no different as it’s pretty hard to come by and actually has three different versions to look out for. To that end, Richard Stanley can definitely be considered the best horror director you never saw. While he had a resurgence with the Nic Cage cosmic Lovecraft horror Color Out of Space, the rest of his catalogue is either a wonderful hot mess like his incomplete version of The Island of Dr. Moreau where he was fired or his first two movies that just don’t get talked about enough. While Hardware is loosely based on a comic, Dust Devil is what I would call a wholly original South African supernatural slasher flick. It has lore based in both legend and the creative mind of its writer/director Richard Stanley but with 3 different versions and a lot of studio meddling, it has become of the best candidates we’ve ever had for the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
Hardware, Richard Stanley’s first feature length film, was purchased by the now infamous for all the wrong reasons Weinstein brothers for distribution. It was successful enough even with some of the legal and dramatic baggage that it carried to get the director another movie and this one would end up being a lot more personal as it was a remake and extended version of a movie, he made on 16mm as a student in 1984. It was inspired by what is considered the only serial killer in Namibia, a location in South Africa. Nhadiep, as he was known, had ritualistic killings of mostly rail workers in the early 1980s and was illusive in his capture from authorities. He was believed by the locals to be a shapeshifter and even after he was allegedly killed in a shootout with police, people didn’t believe he was actually dead. Stanley would eventually take a lot of that lore and made it even more supernatural on screen.
He gave the script to producer Joanne Sellar who he knew from their work together on Hardware and she was able to secure 2.8 million for the budget and get agreement from the government to shoot the entire film in Namibia. The crew was a mix of different countries even if most of the listings you can find have it as a British movie. That mixed crew was from all over including British, American, South African, and Namibian for both in front of and behind the camera. Some of it followed Stanley from Hardware with the score by Simon Boswell, editing by Derek Trigg, and cinematography by Steven Chivers. The cast only has one carry over in William Hootkins who goes from a despicable pervert in Hardware to a fleeing South African Police Captain here. While it doesn’t have any other crossover, it does maintain having different recognizable actors.
The main heroes are played by Zakes Mokae who you may most recognize as the villain from The Serpent and the Rainbow amongst a bunch of other fun roles, and Chelsea Field who I first saw in Masters of the Universe and The Last Boy Scout but also showed up in way too fun things like Renny Harlin’s Prison and The Birds II which almost certainly shouldn’t exist. They are balanced on the scales of good and evil by Robert John Burke who plays the titular Dust Devil. Burke had the unfortunate assignment of following Peter Weller and starring as RoboCop in the third movie. He may have been better than we think but he was put in a movie that was neutered to PG-13 to help ticket sales, video game creations, and a toy line. Burke has had a hell of a career though with appearances in Tombstone and a bunch of other action flicks as well as horror stuff like the lead in Thinner and a supporting role in Hide and Seek.
Stanley took everything he learned on Hardware and expands it with his vision of a movie that he tried to make himself. It feels much more epic than his first movie while simultaneously being more personal too. While Hardware takes place mostly in one building apart from a character bringing the robot villain to that building, Dust Devil is expansive and has a chase all over the South African landscape. Its also filled to the brim with a lot heavier themes than Hardware. While Hardware is a fairly straightforward sci-fi horror movie, Dust Devil deals with abusive marriages, race issues, the effect of a child’s death on the parent, and national belief and superstition. It is also harder to pigeonhole into a genre but is definitely able to be put into the category of horror. When I decided to do a blind buy on the old two-disc DVD from DVD Planet in Huntington Beach, California, I don’t think I was ready for it or even knew what to expect. 20 years later I get it and hope that it gets a wider release for more eyes to see.
The movie essentially follows a South African demon known as a Dust Devil as he works his way through the desert landscape in the shape of a man. We are told a lot of the lore and what he is by an old drive in theater projectionist named Joe who is also a Sangoma which is a South African Healer. The Dust Devil picks up a woman who he ends up killing during sex and as horrific as that sounds, the real horror happens after. The movie opens with Burke looking all cool in his long jacket and hat, something Stanley himself would emulate in his personal life, but the devil part of the dust devil reveals itself shortly after. He cuts her up, taking her fingers with her, and burns down her house without caring that the police will find him. On the other side of the movie, we have Wendy fleeing her abusive marriage and officer Mukrob investigating murders that become all too regular.
While the three stories don’t fully intersect until the end of the third act, they are intertwined in the history of the country. The investigating officer has nightmares about his child dying and wife leaving him while slowly believing the tales that Joe is telling him. Wendy tries to end her life before finding hope in the Dust Devil hitchhiker followed just as quickly by an overwhelming urge to fight and stay alive, and the Dust Devil himself is infatuated with Wendy both to quench his abject loneliness and his thirst and need for souls of those that he believes have given up. We as the audience get invested in every character and it’s impossible to not get sucked up in both the lore and the world building. Things like the police finding evidence of similar killings from nearly 100 years ago to little details like Joe reminiscing about a double feature hosted at his theater that included The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. That’s our kind of double feature and clearly Joe has impeccable taste.
The acting and writing of the story are top tier even with the cast and writer not going on to too much acclaim but it’s also the supporting crew that give Dust Devil a leg up. The cinematography has room to breathe with its vast landscapes and the score jumps between whimsical, dangerous, and outright frightening when it needs it. The effects are great too with tons of gore both with characters deaths including the ones we don’t see, and one offs like the many different looks to the Dust Devil either when he is actively chasing people or when he looks into his own soul in a motel bathroom mirror. A final head explosion and the use of different color grading on the film to represent how the characters are feeling also go a long way to give the movie both a bigger budget feel and a grander scope than Stanley’s previous effort.
While I love the fierceness of Chelsea Fields’ Wendy and the inner sadness of Zakes Moakes’ Ben, this is certainly Robert John Burke’s movie. He is able to move between cold, loving, and intense with little to no effort between scenes. He can kill without remorse while looking downright surgical with how he leaves crime scenes, but his best work comes when he chases Wendy after an escape attempt. He stalks the open desert like a terminator, using his dark magic to cause multiple car crashes, again practical effects, and then lights the desert ablaze from the spilling gas. It’s a cool scene and for about 15 minutes we get to see many of his different forms and abilities. He can even hold up his hand to try and control the sands and people with little touches like a translucent webbing.
The movie builds a legend, and the movie ends with its legend intact while following all of the rules it sets up. Sadly, the movie was doomed from the start. Studio interference and fear of a wholly original product gave it multiple different releases under different names and cuts across the world. It didn’t make much money and Stanley had to fight to get the original cut. While the studio wanted to cut it down to a barely Ed Wood or Roger Corman 85 minutes and Stanley’s first cut was a 120-minute epic, eventually we would get a final cut of 108 minutes. Multiple versions were seen, and one was even renamed as Demonica which grossly misrepresents the movie’s tone and final product. Critics weren’t kind to it, calling it overlong and pretentious and it never really picked up any steam, or money at the box office for that matter.
Dust Devil is a very personal and emotional effort from Richard Stanley, and I wish I had kept my 2 Disc DVD that contained a work print and loads of special features. It’s better now and dreamlike in both what happens inside the movie with characters often having literal dreams as well as the dreamlike journey it sends its audience on. The film is mostly forgotten to time but its worth tracking down and getting more eyes on it. Give it a shot for yourself to see why it’s not only one of the best horror movies you’ve never seen but maybe to some, never even heard of.
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!