Dust Devil is set in Namibia where after a row with her husband Marco (Rufus Swart) a woman named Wendy (Chelsea Field) finds herself driving through, not going anywhere in particular she is just trying to escape her unhappy marriage. While driving along the desolate Namibian desert highways she comes across a hitchhiker (Robert John Burke) & decides to stop & give him a lift. It's a decision Wendy will regret as it turns out the hitchhiker is in fact an ancient evil spirit known as a Dust Devil who survives by killing people & Wendy is as good a victim as anyone else. The Dust Devil's murderous activities aren't going unnoticed however & local cop Ben Mukurob (Zakes Mokae) is on his trial but will he make it in time to save Wendy?

This British South African co-production was written & directed by Richard Stanley & is an unusual supernatural horror thriller. I have to say at this point that Dust Devil annoyingly exists in several different versions including a studio cut which is the one I saw, a director's cut & a workprint cut so while I might praise the 90 odd minute studio version I saw that doesn't automatically mean you'll watch the same one. In fact you could end up watching a version which is significantly different in both tone & content than the one I will be basing my comment on which will make make my comment completely pointless & irrelevant to you. Anyway, the script takes itself very seriously unlike a lot of horror from the 90's & while that gives it a certain gravity it does try to be a little too straight faced at times. The story is actually very interesting & absorbing with good character's, dialogue & thoughtful situations but I didn't like some of it's more supernatural overtones like the way the hitchhiker just vanished from inside Wendy's car & who was that other hitchhiker by the side of the road during the same scene anyway? Some of the black magic witchcraft mumbo jumbo was a bit heavy handed somewhat off putting at times & came across as silly as well. It's not a fast moving film, even this the shorter 90 odd minute studio cut, but it entertains & it's engaging & quite thought provoking so overall I didn't mind that it was a little slow going at times.

Director Stanley does a great job here & Dust Devil has to be one of the most visually stylish horror flicks of the 90's, the colours, the frame compositions, from aerial shots to long camera tracking shots this is a visually rich film. The bright orange & red Namibian desert adds a lot to the look of the film & the ghost town at the end is cool with most of the buildings half full of sand. I wouldn't say Dust Devil is scary but it's sort of eerie at times, since most of it takes place during the bright sunlight of daytime there isn't a whole lot of atmosphere. Gore wise things are sparse, there's an autopsy scene with various body parts, some severed fingers, a quick shot of a dead body with the upper skin on it's face pulled back & probably the best 'head blown off with a shotgun' scene ever. There's some sex & nudity as well if that sort of thing interests you.

With a supposed budget of about £4,300,000 this actually had a lot of money spent on it, in fact if you were to convert that into dollars we're talking about a $8 million flick which is pretty big budget even now yet alone 15 years ago. Shot on location in Namibia this is well made with good special effects, production values, stylish cinematography & atmospheric music. The acting is good from all involved although some of the South African accents can take a bit of getting used to.

Dust Devil is a good horror film, it's something with more intelligence & style than a lot of sequel driven franchise 90's horror, had this been a bit clearer on a few plot points & had a bit more gore in it then this could have been a classic, as it is it's still very good but not brilliant.

"Dust Devil is one of the only 90's horror classics!" "The special edition DVD from Subversive Cinema is finally a release worthy of this film". "If you haven't seen Dust Devil yet, you're in for a brilliant and refreshing horror surprise". Okay, these are some of the ultimately praising comments I encountered on "Dust Devil" and apparently a lot of people are astonished if you claim you're a horror fanatic and yet haven't seen this film. Now, after borrowing the deluxe DVD-edition from a friend and finally having seen the film, all I can say is … Is that it?!? This is the supposedly brilliant and original 90's classic that I desperately had to watch in order to keep calling myself a horror buff? I mean, it's a respectable and ambitious film and definitely benefices from a handful of unique elements, but I honestly expected more in terms of plot originality and production values. "Dust Devil" boosts an incredibly rudimentary and hugely derivative plot, but writer/director Richard Stanley ("Hardware") effectively camouflages this through sensationally breath-taking filming locations, ultimately ominous sound effects & music and some extremely blatant gore effects. Filmed in one of the most beautiful regions of the world – the South African/Namibian deserts, "Dust Devil" introduces a drifting stranger who gets picked up by a beautiful woman and brought back to an isolated guest house for a night of passionate sex. However, the drifter is an ancient demoniacal African shape-shifter feeding on the despair of depressed people and thus viciously butchers the woman and sets her house on fire before hitching onwards. Next victim is the insecure South African housewife Wendy Robinson, who finally dared to leave her dominant husband and now journeys through the desert on her way to the sea. Meanwhile, the fatigue police officer Ben Mukurob hasn't got the slightest trace to follow and enlists the help of a spiritual cinema projector to learn more about the unusual serial killer. Basically, "Dust Devil" is simply a standard horror story about a traveling serial killer and all the supernatural gibberish and typically African talk about magic are totally irrelevant. The film is amazingly atmospheric and often downright scary, but only thanks to the godforsaken and desolate locations and nightmarish music, because all the rest is disappointingly amateurish. The narration, for example, is completely uninformative and quite annoying. Stanley's subtly processed lectures on South African politics feel somewhat obtrusive whereas the actually relevant dialogs are extremely weak. Worst of all, however, are the irredeemably awful acting performances from the ensemble cast. I personally never liked Robert John Burke but definitely expected a better and more vivid job from Chelsea Field.