304) Demon Seed (1977) Dir: Donald Cammell Date Released: April 8, 1977 Date Seen: September 22, 2012 Rating: 3.75/5
Here's another VHS shoebox pick I saved for a rainy day. I only watched Demon Seed because BAM just programmed it for Halloween, which reminded me that I owned it, but had yet to watch it. Cammell's emphasis on the way Proteus performs in order to avoid detection--of all the amazing things Proteus can do, surely the most amazing is the way he replicates his human masters' voices--is very reminiscent of (you guessed it) Performance. Which is funny, since Nicolas Roeg fans usually say is more of a Roeg film than a Cammell pitcher. But, on top of Performance and Demon Seed's shared thematic concern with performance-as-reality, the latter film's 2001-inspired psyechedlia also felt like a product of the same guy that made Performance. Did Nicolas Roeg ghost-direct this one, too?! Granted, I don't know nearly enough about Performance's famously screwy production history to say just how much of that movie is Cammell's. But now I'm curious to find out. Any tips, impromptu history lessons or suggested reading is welcome.
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