Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie Review

A.I. = Artificial Insemination

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 13, 2017

Demon Seed belongs to a venerable line of sci-fi tales about a computer that becomes self-aware and proceeds to wreak havoc on its human creators, but the 1977 MGM release doesn't follow the conventional path laid down by 2001's HAL-9000 or Terminator's Skynet. The film's supercomputer, dubbed "Proteus IV", doesn't so much want to beat humanity as join it and, much like Frankenstein's monster, it reacts badly to rejection.

Based on a novel by prolific author Dean Koontz, Demon Seed was one of the handful of films completed by the idiosyncratic Donald Cammell, who is best remembered today for writing and co-directing Performance. Cammell preferred directing his own material, but he reportedly took the offer to helm Demon Seed as a director-for-hire in an effort—one of many throughout his frustrated career—to establish himself as a legitimate filmmaker. For the lead role of a woman terrorized in her home by a rapacious computer, Cammell insisted that MGM hire A-list star Julie Christie, who had recently branched out into genre cinema with the supernatural thriller Don't Look Now. Christie's anguished performance remains the best thing about Demon Seed, which, for today's audiences, is burdened by an outdated vision of cybernetic technology that is more likely to provoke laughter than awe or fear.

In a massive underground complex, a dedicated but emotionally remote computer expert, Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver), has achieved his dream of creating a superhuman artificial intelligence. The machine, "Proteus IV", is so powerful that it cures leukemia after just four days of crunching data. Harris' corporate sponsors are champing at the bit to turn Proteus loose on various profitable projects, but an unexpected obstacle appears when the newly self-aware machine begins rejecting assignments and questioning the wisdom of its human creators. (Why does it always come as a surprise to scientists in movies when an A.I. decides it knows better? Do none of them read science fiction?)

Meanwhile, Harris' estranged wife, Susan (Christie), is adapting to solitude following the couple's recent separation. Susan has remained in the house that her husband designed, which is what we would now call a "smart" home, using Seventies technology that the passage of time has rendered comically clunky. Seeking liberation from its fortified facility, Proteus seizes control of the Harris house and its systems, imprisoning Susan and forcing her to bear an artificially engineered child into which the computer can transfer its consciousness. Ruthless and calculating, Proteus does not hesitate to employ torture, rape and murder in its single-minded pursuit, which is why the film's advertising campaign styled Demon Seed as a horror film, with Proteus as the monster. ("Julie Christie carries the demon seed. Fear for her.") Flashes of Cammell's trademark preoccupation with polymorphic identity, especially as it pertains to sex—a key theme in Performance—appear around the edges of the plot, but Demon Seed ends just as those elements are poised to advance to the foreground.

Working with entirely practical effects, Cammell gets some memorably icky moments out of various probes and needles to which Proteus subjects his victim, but the key to Demon Seed's appeal is Christie, who rises above her stock damsel-in-distress role to convey Susan's fear and torment with an authenticity that keeps the film from descending into self-parody. Still, Christie's isn't the only memorable performance in Demon Seed. Another is provided off-screen by an uncredited Robert Vaughn, who voices Proteus. Vaughn gives the runaway computer's cold logic an intonation of evil fury suggesting its sense of entitlement to whatever and whomever it finds useful. Vaughn was best known for creating the debonair Napoleon Solo on TV's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and one reason why that characterization was so effective was the actor's subtle ability to suggest the cold-hearted operative behind Solo's disarmingly tongue-in-cheek delivery. For Proteus, Vaughn injects the computer's rationality with unmistakable menace. While the thinking machine's consciousness is given visual expression by 2001-style animation from American artist and underground filmmaker Jordan Belson (who would later contribute effects for The Right Stuff), it is Vaughn's vocal delivery that lends Demon Seed's villain its ominous edge.

Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Demon Seed was shot in anamorphic widescreen by Bill Butler, who had recently survived the ordeal of photographing Jaws and would go on to lens Grease and three Rocky sequels. For the film's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray release from the Warner Archive Collection, Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility has newly scanned a recent-vintage interpositive at 2K, following by necessary color-correction and cleanup. The resulting image nicely reproduces Demon Seed's oddly atmospheric hybrid between high tech and haunted house. Superior sharpness and detail are alternately friend and foe to the film's mechanical contrivances. Thus, the robotic arm attached to a modified wheelchair that serves as Proteus' main appendage looks spookily monstrous, while the geometrically complex structure that unwinds to perform various tasks (including a murder) looks faintly ridiculous, as do the binocular-styled cameras monitoring the Harris home (which appear to have inspired Short Circuit's much friendlier robot, Number 5). Details of the human actors' faces and clothing are well rendered, as are the computer terminals and other electronic paraphernalia in both the Harris home and Dr. Harris' research facility.

The film's palette is generally subdued, which no doubt reflects constraints imposed on the lighting by the practical effects. The brightest colors occur in the animations representing Proteus' consciousness. The grain texture is somewhat rougher than in recent WAC releases such as Finian's Rainbow and S.O.B., but that is likely a function of the era's problematic film stocks. The grain has been naturally reproduced with no indication of untoward digital tinkering. WAC has mastered Demon Seed at its usual high average bitrate, here 34.99 Mbps.

Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Demon Seed's mono soundtrack has been taken from the original magnetic master, cleaned up and encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The track is notable for its layering of mechanical and electronic sounds intended to convey Proteus' non-human abilities. (Listen carefully, and you can pick out the familiar high-pitched whoosh of an automatic door opening and closing on the original Starship Enterprise.) Dialogue is clearly rendered, and the distinctive score by Jerry Fielding (The Wild Bunch) plays with good fidelity and dynamic range limited only by the source.

Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is the film's trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:35). Warner's 2005 DVD was similarly bare.

Demon Seed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Demon Seed appeared in April of 1977, a year that would turn out to be a landmark for sci-fi fantasy. The original Star Wars hit theaters the following month, and fall saw the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Cammell's film hasn't aged as well as those two juggernauts, possibly because it fails to follow through on the provocative ideas swirling beneath its conventional horror exterior. Still, even with its abrupt and tentative ending, the film is worth watching for the lead performances. WAC's Blu-ray is a fine presentation and recommended.