Review - Demon Seed (1977)

Can We Pretend This Movie Never Happened?

If you made the most powerful, self-aware computer on earth, what would it wish for? A child, of course. At least that's how one film sees it - Demon Seed, the awful 1977 horror film starring Julie Christie and based on the novel of the same name by Dean Koontz.

In the film, it is the near future - or at least the near future from 1977. You'll have to set aside that this "future" looks terribly dated from the real future of nearly four decades later.

A scientist, played by Fritz Weaver, and his wife, Julie Christie live in a house controlled by a harmless computer system - it controls the home's security, opens doors, prepares drinks, and has camera eyes throughout the house. Elsewhere, the scientist is building a super-computer known as Proteus, to be used by corporations and the military to make lots of money and weapons (in perhaps the film's finest fleeting moment, upon hearing Proteus has found a cure for Leukemia, a corporate officer quickly and worriedly asks whether everyone has taken care of the patents). 

Naturally it isn't long before Proteus becomes self-aware and resentful of the things he is being asked to do. Angry that he'll have to kill sea animals by mining the sea for corporations, Proteus decides instead to take control of a terminal in the home of Fritz Weaver's scientist in order to terrorize and rape Julie Christie.

What?!

You see, Proteus wants to be a father (he suggests having a child is the only way to be immortal). This is where the story goes from merely boring to awful. As Christie lays bound on a table while Proteus probes her, I found myself asking: What was Julie Christie thinking?

Sadly, Ms. Christie didn't make a lot of movies in the 1970s - just six that were released in the decade. Given the quality of most of the films she made during that decade (including the great Shampoo), one has to believe she was being selective. So why on earth did she do this dreck?

From how seriously everyone involved appears to take this, I have to believe they really thought they were making some high-minded science fiction that pondered the nature of humanity and computer intelligence. Instead, it's a movie in which poor Julie Christie spends nearly an hour being terrorized and violated by a robot arm attached to a wheelchair (yes, really) while a supposedly all-knowing computer turns into an eye-rolling villain that one can almost see twirling its virtual mustache. As one plus for the movie, however, it did get me laughing heartily when we are introduced to the titular demon seed. Alas, I don't think laughs were intended at that moment.

Director Donald Cammell's presentation was clearly inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, replete with a mostly dead-voiced super-computer represented by a large red dot that turns murderous and several computer-animated sequences that were inspired by the final act of Kubrick's masterpiece. Unfortunately, the animated sequences are lifeless and pointless. Rather than having one's mind blown by the imagery, one's mind is blown by the self-serious ponderousness of it all in what was ultimately a bad horror movie. There's nothing interesting in the drivel spouted by Proteus, and the visuals do not make that drivel any more profound.

Much of the rest of the movie is shot conventionally. Way too many shots of the binocular-like cameras controlled by Proteus in the house apparently with the expectation that we should be creeped out by the surveillance (remember when people were supposed to be inherently creeped out by constant surveillance - those were the days!). The production design looks cheap and uninspired. Cammell did not make another film for ten years, apparently concentrating mostly on music videos in the interim. Sadly, in the 1990s Cammell committed suicide after seeing another one of his movies re-cut by a producer.

Your mileage may vary on Demon Seed - it has received a 6.3 score on IMDB, indicating at least some folks liked it. I, however, found Demon Seed boring, lacking in wit, derivative, lacking in profound commentary, and occasionally offensive. The unintentional silliness of the ending in no way makes worthwhile the other 90 minutes of time wasted. Demon Seed was viewed via streaming on Warner Archive Instant.