Donald Camell was not a director who got to make all that many movies, which is definitely something of a shame. He is probably best known for the psychedelic freak-out that is Performance, a film he co-directed with visionary visual stylist Nicolas Roeg. Demon Seed, is a much more straightforward film by comparison but its hardly a ordinary film by relative standards. Based on a short and entertaining Dean Koontz novel of the same name, it's a sci-fi/horror about an AI computer called Proteus who quickly becomes frustrated by its isolation in a computer lab and decides to connect to a terminal located in its creator's home, and from there implements the forced incarceration and impregnation of his wife.
In some ways this film is like what would happen if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey became just a little more unhinged. But one of the interesting things is that the machine has a conscience and quickly decides it will not blindly follow orders. It refuses to assist in the plundering of the ocean bed at the expense of the lives of millions of sea creatures. To this end we have an AI computer who forcibly impregnates a woman but who is far from one-dimensionally villainous in its desire to study humans. I thought some of the special effects of the metallic manifestation in the basement really hold up as well and the ending is pretty nicely delivered, with shades of the work of H. R. Giger in some of the design work I thought. Julie Christie was a good choice here, as she is a great actress and pretty fearless in front of the camera and this film has some tough-looking scenes. I also really enjoyed Robert Vaughn's voice work as Proteus. It all adds up to a pretty bold and disturbing bit of sci-fi, which given the serious concern that AI is causing in the world today, its additionally a film whose subject matter has retained a fair bit of relevance into the present.
In some ways this film is like what would happen if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey became just a little more unhinged. But one of the interesting things is that the machine has a conscience and quickly decides it will not blindly follow orders. It refuses to assist in the plundering of the ocean bed at the expense of the lives of millions of sea creatures. To this end we have an AI computer who forcibly impregnates a woman but who is far from one-dimensionally villainous in its desire to study humans. I thought some of the special effects of the metallic manifestation in the basement really hold up as well and the ending is pretty nicely delivered, with shades of the work of H. R. Giger in some of the design work I thought. Julie Christie was a good choice here, as she is a great actress and pretty fearless in front of the camera and this film has some tough-looking scenes. I also really enjoyed Robert Vaughn's voice work as Proteus. It all adds up to a pretty bold and disturbing bit of sci-fi, which given the serious concern that AI is causing in the world today, its additionally a film whose subject matter has retained a fair bit of relevance into the present.