Dust Devil (1992)

June 19, 2015 3:54 AM

A woman on the run from her abusive husband encounters a mysterious hitch-hiker.

The movie's wikipedia page. Director Richard Stanley's Dust Devil production diary.

Part of the MeFi Horror Club series.

MeFi Horror Club details.

posted by doctornecessiter (3 comments total)

I do enjoy a good stylized 80s contemporary horror western (a la Near Dark, Razorback, The Hitcher, etc.)...Except, okay, this is the 90s. (Though the only thing I caught that really placed this in the 90s was the hip hop song playing in the bar where the husband gets beat up.) I love the locale...Speaking of Razorback, the South African locations here really [falsely] screamed "Ozploitation" to me the whole time (interesting that this is where George Miller had to film Fury Road when the Australian locations turned out to be too lush)...That ghost town with the buildings full of sand was fantastic.

It was strange to see some recognizable American actors like Chelsea Field and William Hootkins given overdubbed accents...Like the opposite of what the US distributor had done to Mel Gibson's voice in the original Mad Max.

I could maybe have used a little less narration. Establish that the antagonist is a supernatural entity, that's fine, but then coming back briefly throughout the rest of the movie was a bit much...Though I'm glad the narrator was actually a character in the movie rather than just a nebulous entity catching us up.
posted by doctornecessiter at 4:06 AM on June 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Previous Richard Stanley - his career has been interesting to say the least. Dust Devil is no Hardware, and suffers from being significantly less structured, but I'm still rather find of the whole feel of it.
posted by Artw at 11:58 AM on June 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I remember being really shocked when the hitch-hiker snaps her head after having sex. Like punched in the gut shocked. And I was watching quite a lot of horror movies in those days. So I guess that was pretty effective film-making.
posted by ojemine at 4:08 AM on June 20, 2015