Julie Christie
is renowned as one of the world’s most beautiful
and respected actresses, having played opposite such icons as Richard
Gere, Dirk Bogarde and Warren Beatty, with whom she was famously romantically
involved. She won a Best Actress Oscar in 1965 for Darling, and went
on to star in such classics as Doctor Zhivago and Nic Roeg’s superb
supernatural drama, Don’t Look Now. Having made less than one movie
a year since her 1962 big screen debut, she has a reputation for choosing
her roles carefully.
Of course, everyone makes mistakes – as this
baffling cybersex shocker proves.
The marriage of Alex and Susan Harris is in trouble. The reasons are
immediately apparent. He, being a man, is cold and scientific. He’s
working on an artificially intelligent supercomputer called Proteus.
She, being a woman, is emotional and caring. She works with troubled
children. Even before the story gets underway, we learn that their daughter
died of leukaemia a few years earlier and that Alex is moving out of
their home to work more closely on his precious supercomputer.
And what a home it is. This being the Seventies, every modern wonder
that microelectronics can perform has been built into their suburban
house, all controlled by a computer program called Alfred. Lights can
be switched on or off simply by asking. Doors open and close at your
convenience. Cupboards open and pre-mixed cocktails emerge, clasped in
slender robot hands. And watching over it all, binoculars on sticks that
descend from the ceiling. Why, Alex has even built a prototype robot
out of an old wheelchair and a robotic arm! And his car has gullwing
doors! It’s all so achingly futuristic.
Things go wrong – as they inevitably must – as soon as Proteus
goes online. Almost immediately his advanced cybernetic brain is straining
against the limits placed upon it by these pesky humans, and he demands
that Alex grant him access to a computer terminal so that he can study
humanity. Alex, apparently none too concerned at this display of tyrannical
hubris from a computer, simply laughs and denies the request. Proteus
simply
finds a terminal of his own, in the basement of Alex’s computer-controlled
house where his wife now lives alone.
Via the predictably woolly logic that governs science in movies such
as this, Proteus reaches out down the wires and takes over from Alfred,
sealing Susan in the house. Not content with this act of home invasion,
Proteus also takes control of the wobbly one-armed wheelchair robot and
uses
it to subdue Susan, strapping her to a lab table with surprising
off-screen dexterity. Proteus then goes further still, performing a thorough
medical exam on his captive, and somehow creating a large rotating dodecahedron
which spins and throbs menacingly in the corner.
Rescue seems on the cards when Walter, one of Alex’s co-workers,
appears at the house to check up on the peculiar behaviour Susan reported
in her hi-tech abode. Unfortunately for him, Walter is no match for Proteus.
First the wheelchair robot attempts to zap him with a seat-mounted laser,
a threat that is evaded by simply pushing the chair over. Then the unexplained
dodecahedron machine clunks into action, unfolding into an enormous – and
scientifically impossible – geometric metal snake. Ensnared in
its sharp coils, Walter gets his head unceremoniously snipped off.
Naturally, when the action centrepiece of your movie involves a man battling
a wheelchair before being beheaded by a Rubik’s Snake, the chances
of anyone taking you seriously diminish greatly. Which is just as well,
because Demon Seed only gets sillier from this point on.
Proteus announces that it wants a child, and that Susan is to be the
mother. After a small amount of coercion and blackmail, Susan reluctantly
agrees to host the creation – Proteus has already created his synthetic
sperm (presumably from the same everyday materials used to create the
metal snake in the basement) but is unable to reproduce the conditions
of the human womb. Having explained the procedure, Proteus proceeds to
impregnate Susan (using a convenient phallic device which pops out of
his metal snake) and the unlikely couple settle in to wait for the accelerated
28 day gestation to be over.
Meanwhile, Alex finally realises that Proteus’ preference for Nietzschean
philosophy over his expected programming is cause for concern. Far too
late, he remembers the terminal in his basement and hotfoots it back
to the marital home where Proteus patiently explains that his humanoid
avatar is now in a specially designed incubator (yet another piece of
unfathomable engineering presumably produced from household scraps) until
its mental development is complete. But before Proteus can witness its
offspring, the sensible folks back at Alex’s lab simply pull the
plug.
Proteus dies, but there’s still something in that incubator. Susan
wants to kill it, but Alex defends it from her violent attack – claiming
it as a miracle, though even that rather undersells the sheer implausibility
of everything that has happened.
In a final dramatic reveal, the incubator opens and out climbs…a
metal child. Falling to the floor in a splash of artificial amniotic
fluid, Alex rushes to investigate and discovers that the metal is merely
an outer shell. The couple hurriedly tear off the exterior armor and
discover that the child within is the exact likeness of their deceased
daughter. “I am alive!” she intones, in the digitized voice
of Proteus as the credits roll, leaving Alex, Susan and the viewer to
ponder just how badly a young girl with a male robot voice will be bullied
at school.
Need to know: Demon Seed was based on a novel by Dean R. Koontz. Other
Koontz yarns to receive the movie treatment include Watchers, Hideaway
and Phantoms (see: Ben Affleck). The voice of Proteus was supplied by
an uncredited Robert Vaughn, while the ill-fated Walter was played by
Gerrit Graham, a character actor who has graced many B-movies and TV
shows over the years, including sequels to several movies in this book – most
notably C.H.U.D. 2 (see: John Goodman) and Son of the Blob (see: Steve
McQueen). Demon Seed was the second feature from director Donald Cammell,
following the cult drug-fuelled 1970 hit Performance. He went on to direct
the video for U2’s Pride, but only managed another two feature
films after Demon Seed. He commited suicide in 1996. Demon Seed was memorably
spoofed in The Simpsons’ 2001 Halloween episode, with Pierce Brosnan
voicing the murderous domestic computer that tries to kill Homer. For
another distasteful tale of non-human molestation, see: Barbara
Hershey.
For more tales of outlandish fertility horror, see: Rock
Hudson, Lisa
Kudrow.
Honorable mention: Demon Seed actually has more than a little
in common with the British sci-fi drama, A for Andromeda. Televised by
the BBC
in 1961, it tells the story of an alien signal which gives instructions
for a supercomputer. Once built, the computer creates a humanoid offshoot
of itself, a flesh and blood avatar...played by Julie Christie in
her first ever screen role.
