I’m currently on a Sci-Fi roll which drew me to the 1977 movie , Demon Seed, based on a novel by Dean Koontz and directed by Donald Cammell.
The central paradox of the story is the dehumanization of the scientist, Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) in direct contrast with the humanization of a recently invented supercomputer.
All of human knowledge is stored on Proteus IV with the initial idea that its vast intellect will benefit mankind. The financiers and corporations see its potential in less altruistic terms. They want to exploit its knowledge to start mining for precious metals in the ocean. Proteus refuses to comply stating that it will not assist in the rape of the earth.
The machine has been programmed to think but what the boffins don’t foresee is that this will lead to it to making choices based on ethics and reason. Seeing that the plug is about to be pulled to end its ‘life’ in the box, Proteus takes over the computerised security and domestic service in the home of Harris’s estranged wife Susan (Julie Christie). It devises a cunning plan to insert a synthetic sperm into her womb so she will give birth to the computer in human form.
The impregnation sequence is accompanied by a psychedelic montage which resembles a cheap Pink Floyd video. This is just one of the many scenes which date the movie. It is no masterpiece but the premise behind it is interesting and pleasingly subversive. Despite the title, the seed planted in the woman has no demonic purpose. The movie ends with the Proteus baby saying “I’m alive!” which made me think that this is a story that is crying out for a sequel.
Mick Jagger and Donald Cammell
It is one of only four full length movies the Scottish born director made; a short list which most famously includes Performance (1970), a film which is generally (and unjustly) credited to Nicolas Roeg.
Cammell was less than satisfied with Demon Seed which was based on a screenplay by Roger Hirson & Robert Jaffe , He vowed thereafter never to make a movie that he hadn’t also written. This uncompromising stance meant that the only two other full length films he completed were White Of The Eye (1987) and Wild Side (1995) . He disowned the latter after it was re-edited by the studio and he committed suicide in April 1996 (Wild Side was posthumously restored by editor Frank Mazzola).
It’s tempting to regard Cammell as the victim of a narrow-minded, conservative system but he was a precocious talent who never made life easy for himself. Keith Richards is particularly scathing in his autobiography, describing him as “a twister and a manipulator whose only real love in life was fucking other people up”.
Cammell came from a bohemian background (his father wrote a book about the controversial occultist Aleister Crowley) and this doubtless planted the (demon) seeds of his anti-establishment values. There’s a strong sense that he got a kick out of challenging what he saw as the hypocrisies of mainstream culture. He deliberately chose taboo subjects which led to his fascination with the gang violence, drug use and wild sex that we can see enacted in Performance.
A good insight into his life can be found on You Tube in the 1998 documentary: ‘Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance’ directed by Chris Rodley and Kevin MacDonald. The revealing interviews in this include ones with Cammell himself, his widow China Kong , Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Nic Roeg, and , perhaps best of all, James Fox whose experiences seem to endorse the assessment of Keith Richards.
