Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Demon Seed - 1977

DEMON SEED 1977lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/11/demon-seed-1977.html

Back in 1977 I recall asking a friend if she was as eager as I to see the new Donald Cammell film, Demon Seed,opening at theaters that week. Her reply: "Ugh! Hollywood just keeps thinking of new ways to rape women." I tookthat for a no.

Her response surprised me. My friend and I were classmates at film school, drawn together by a love for thought-provoking, mainstream films that veered into the realm of art, and a shared fondness for Cammell's remarkabledirecting debut, Performance (1971). Given that Demon Seed was only Cammell's second film in six years, Ithought my friend would find provocative the prospect of a director as artistically idiosyncratic as Cammell taking ona film that, in summary, read like something better suited to William Castle or Roger Corman: a supercomputerimprisons a woman (Julie Christie) in her home, intent on impregnating her and creating a new life form.

I mean, how could my friend so oversimplify what was obviously going to be some kind of meta-commentary on theuneasy relationship between man and machine played out against the life-affirming emotional attributes of thecontemporary woman vs. the cold, patriarchal dominance of technology? It was like someone saying Rosemary'sBaby was just about a hell-beast raping a mortal woman. Subtexturally speaking, couldn't my friend see that therehad to be so much more to Demon Seed than the exploitative theme and the offensive premise?

And what about the Julie Christie connection? Surely Julie Christie—that skilled, intelligent, serious-minded, movieicon of the '60s, who publicly eschewed Hollywood stardom and cheesecake glamour for serious roles. Who turnedher back on untold millions due of her level-headed, principled, proto-feminist disinterest in portraying helplessgirlfriends and supportive male appendages—surely SHE wouldn't participate in a film that degrades women! Wouldshe?

Julie Christie as Dr. Susan Harris

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Fritz Weaver as Dr. Alex Harris

Gerrit Graham as Walter

Robert Vaughn as the voice of Proteus IV

Well, here it is some 34 years and countless viewings later, and as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out onwhether my friend's diminution of Demon Seed was a rash oversimplification or simply hit the nail on the head.

The marriage between child psychologist Susan Harris (Christie) and computer scientist husband, Alex (Weaver),becomes strained following the loss of their child to leukemia. Susan fears Alex has grown increasingly remote andunemotional, immersing himself in work she views as dehumanizing technology. Specifically: the creation of anorganic super-computer named Proteus IV. Attempting a trial separation, Susan opts to remain alone in theirspacious, fully-automated, fortress-secure home, run by an all-seeing computer named Alfred (a.k.a., Red Flag #1).

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Marital discord: "Am I so cold?"

In his defense, it is clear that Alex is confronting his grief in the only way he knows how; channeling his energiestowards Proteus IV discovering a cure for the kind of cancer that took the life of his child. And indeed, it is Alex'sdisinterest in Proteus IV's financial and political potential that leaves him vulnerable to the profit-motivated demandsof his subsidizers who wish Proteus IV to serve man's needs as they dictate.

Alas, Proteus is a thinking computer with a moral code (of sorts), a man's voice (Robert Vaughn), and a particularlymasculine tendency to think he's right in the face of blatant contradictions. When ordered to conduct research intoan undersea mining operation that would disrupt the eco-system, Proteus high-mindedly declares, "I refuse to assistyou in the rape of the earth!"

A point well-taken were it not for the nasty bit of business he/it feels perfectly vindicated in embarking on justmoments later; the raping and impregnation of Susan.Why? So that it, Proteus IV, who possesses all the wisdom and ignorance of all men, can feel the sun on its face andachieve the kind of immortality that only an offspring can guarantee.Or something like that.

You see, the objective of Proteus' plan to procreate fluctuates from altruistic to despotic, depending upon whomhe's speaking to and what it/ is he is trying to reason/intimidate them into doing.

And therein lies the paradox of Proteus IV. Perhaps intentionally, due to Proteus' inconsistent shifts from sadistictormentor to world savior, we are never sure if we are meant to side with Proteus' rather logical, humane arguments(the Icon Industries money men are portrayed as villainous fat cats), or if Proteus IV is just a machine gone mad.Perfectly valid to have that point left ambiguous, but as the film is constructed, it feels less like food for thought andmore like a lack of focus and sloppy storytelling. It certainly doesn't help that when it wishes to persuade, Proteusspeaks in the soothing, calming tones of a yoga instructor and shows trippy psychedelic lights when he speaks. Yetwhen it wants to get its way, employs the psychological games of a abusive husband wife-beater ("Why do youmake me do these things?").

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As a child psychologist, Christie's character is established (amidst sunshine andplant life)

as possessing values opposite of those of her tech-minded husband

Captive-women movies like The Collector (1965) and Tattoo (1981) always have a rough time justifying the amountof time they ask the audience to watch a woman brutalized for the sake of making a narrative point. For my taste,these films never successfully transcend their male-gaze oppressiveness, and after a couple of hours of rape andvictimization played out for my horror entertainment, I'm usually left pretty numb to any moralistic point they professto make at the eleventh hour. Demon Seed holds out hope because of the intelligence of Julie Christie'sperformance and the validity of the horror film/sci-fi thriller conflict as initially presented. But as much as I think thisis one of Christie's best performances and well worth watching, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not in the surehands of a director intentionally leading me down a path of provocative, science vs. man debates. Donald Cammellfails to leave a distinctive mark and much of what occurs feels as though the character's motivations and actions aremanipulated by the demands of the genre.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMI'm not unduly fond of science fiction, but I do enjoy a good psychological thriller. Demon Seed does a lot of thingswrong, but what it does particularly well is create a palpable sense of dread and tension from a situation that is thestuff of nightmares. Julie Christie's ability to convincingly take her character all the way from mild annoyance,defiance, rage, bewilderment, to abject terror is a thing to behold.

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PERFORMANCESThe absolute smartest thing the makers of Demon Seed did was to hire Julie Christie. Without question she is thesingle reason the film works at all, her assured performance never once succumbing to the usual "helpless victim"clichés of the genre. It's a major asset that Christie is an actress of sensitivity capable of conveying a vulnerabilitythat is at the same time very strong. In fact, Christie doesn't have a weak bone in her body. And it is precisely theinconceivability of her suffering victimization at the hands of man or machine that saves the film from beingunendurably lurid and morally offensive. I can't think of another actress more believable as a match for, and worthyadversary of, a diabolical super-brain. As Mia Farrow's performance transcended the horror genre and elevatedRosemary's Baby to the level of a modern classic, Julie Christie achieves as much here, but the film surroundingher standout performance isn't up to the task. She's so good that she only calls attention to how weak the script isand how poorly she's served by it.

Julie Christie gives one of the finest performances of her career in Demon Seed. One wishes the screenplay were more worthy of her efforts.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSThere's no denying that Demon Seed has an intriguing premise that thought-provokingly meshes the techno-paranoia of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the body-invasion terror of Rosemary's Baby. But unlike either of thosefilms, Demon Seed suffers from the feeling that it is perhaps a couple of story conferences short of fullyunderstanding what it wants to say about it all.

The computer technicians of Icon IndustriesFans of director Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise will remember Garrit

Graham (foreground) as glam-rock star Beef, and Harold Oblong (far right) asa member of the rock group, The Undeads.

Ira Levin & Roman Polanski mitigated a lot of potential criticism concerning Rosemary's Baby (misogyny,sensationalism, violence against women as entertainment) through the firm establishment of a consistent point ofview (Rosemary's); a defined moral imperative (Rosemary's lapsed Catholicism reflects the morally ambiguous toneof the film as her love for her child supersedes the immorality of evil); and an understanding of the story's largersocial implications (the religious and social patriarchal dominance over women and their bodies is presented as

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inconsistent with the film's sympathetic view of Rosemary).

Like Rosemary's Baby, Demon Seed has at its center, a vulnerable, yet smart and resourceful woman. But insteadof heightening audience identification/empathy through the presentation of events from her perspective (an easyenough thing to accomplish given that we've all felt helpless to the whims of machines at one time or another), Demon Seed keeps us at a remove and puts us in the distasteful position of sharing the voyeuristic eyes of ProteusIV.

Seeing through the distorted lens of Proteus IV

I kept hoping for the film to reconcile in some meaningful way its initial scenes emphasizing Susan's belief in theimportance of feelings and expressing emotions with all the test-of-wills/battle-of-wits sequences with Proteus IV.But the film ends without a viable justification, beyond genre entertainment, for asking us to endure the manyprotracted scenes of physical and psychological abuse perpetrated against Julie Christie for the bulk of the film. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mishandling of Demon Seed's final moments, which is staged for maximumdramatic payoff, but does so at the cost of shifting focus from Susan and placing the viewer in the shoes of thescience-minded Alex (who registers about three seconds of concern for his wife before becoming near orgasmic atthe thought of the scientific miracle in the basement). Yes, the audience is clamoring to see the baby at this pointtoo, but a more skilled director might have taken precautions to prevent Susan from being shunted to the sidelines atthe end of the film after she has been front and center throughout.

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It's a gross miscalculation of the importance of audience identification, and one of the main reasons why, in the end,I think that Demon Seed is just not up to the task set forth by its premise. It succeeds as a more-thoughtful-than-usual sci-fi thriller, but trips itself up on failing to comprehend howuncomfortable (if not downright unpleasant) audiences are likely to find a film that asks one to bear witness to awoman's victimization all in service of an academic techno-geek debate.

The triumph of technology over emotion?Demon Seed ends on a thoughtful note, with Christie enigmatically studying her

child/creationfrom the sidelines. No embraces, no tears, no tenderness

Copyright © Ken Anderson

About Ken Anderson: LA-based writer and lifelong film enthusiast. You can read more of his essays on films of the’60s & ‘70s at Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For

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