Duane

A number of murders have been committed in the small town Bethany. Mysterious symbols written in the blood of the victims, lead the police to believe that they are dealing with rituals and black magic. Wendy, a young housewife who has left her husband, goes out into the desert on her way to Bethany. She picks up Hitch in her car; a mysterious stranger Wendy finds both attractive and repulsive. The police are inclined to believe that there is something mysterious and horrible, perhaps even supernatural, behind the murders.
Gradually Wendy discovers the terrifying truth about Hitch.
Comment:
In Dust Devil, the lone rider of Eng/ish horror Richard Stanley, has exchanged the claustrophobic anguish from Hardware to a burning fear in the Namibian desert. A policeman investigating a series of murders, a young woman running away from a disgusting marriage and a hitch-hiker, soiled with the bloodstained wanderings of decades. They meet far from everything, in a desert town, colored by a blood-red sun.
The hitch·hiker's past is as chillingly horrible as his frosty eyes. His path is covered with the blood of helpless victims, with fear, and horror and the with invoca-
tions of medicine men. The mythical murderer is a deceitful being who lures his victims into the borderland of twilight and steals their souls with the lens of his polaroid camera. He is a combination of the avenger of the spaghetti western, the tragic demon of Gothic horror and the possessed ritual murderer of today. Only a hated policeman and a young woman can stop this black knight of the desert.
Richard Stanley, who began to deliver his visual message with rock videos, proved to be in total command of the horror genre already in his first film Hardware. In Dust Devil Stanley forgets about the fetters of the genre. He creates a seductive tale of horror for the screen, where the mysticism of the past, black humor (Marianne Sagebrecht in a nauseatingly funny mortuary scene) and explicit violence take the audience on a visually dazzling journey toward the last battle. And the inevitabJe ending which is just the beginning of new horror.
Matti Paunio

Orig. titel
Dust Devil: Medverkande
Robert Burke, Chelsea Field, Zakes Mokae: Producent
Joanne Sellar: Manus
Richard Stanley: Musik
Simon Boswell: Talat språk
English