Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977)
Cast: Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerrit Graham, Barry Kroeger, Lisa Lu, Larry J. Blake, John O'Leary, Alfred Dennis, Davis Roberts, Patricia Wilson, Dana Laurita. Screenplay: Robert Jaffe, Roger O. Hirson, based on a novel by Dean R. Koontz. Cinematography: Bill Butler. Production design: Edward C. Carfagno. Film editing: Frank Mazzola. Music: Jerry Fielding.
I'm still more afraid of insufficient human intelligence than of artificial computer intelligence, but I appreciate the prophetic quality of Demon Seed, a film that finds itself resurfacing today amid our uneasiness about social media and the invasion of privacy. Whenever I address my Echo Dot as "Alexa," I will be reminded of Julie Christie's Susan trying out voice commands on her wired house, which has turned from a servant into a jailer and rapist. The movie, unfortunately, looks a little cheesy today -- the cinematography is occasionally murky and the set-ups cluttered -- and it lacks a leavening sense of humor, which often makes horror sci-fi more fun and frightening. I question the waste of an actor of Julie Christie's caliber in a role that's mostly a passive woman-in-jeopardy cliché. And for that matter, why is the only woman scientist in the film Chinese? Are we stuck in the "sinister Oriental" mode here? There's a lot of muddle and loose ends in the plotting: What's the point, for example, of Susan's work as a therapist for a young girl, other than to use the kid as a bit of leverage that Proteus can wield in his torture of Susan? And why do we learn so late in the film that Susan and Alex lost a child, who died of leukemia, some time after we are told that one of Proteus's first achievements was a cure for leukemia? Still, Demon Seed holds its place as an unsettling view of the future that has become our present.