Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 4

  I've been having some amazing retro discoveries this year. This is not one of them.

  Interesting that Koontz's original idea of Proteus (even though it all goes back to Hal) has a semblance to Alexa but the execution is so absurd that it's hard to imagine this was ever taken seriously. So many questions in the film's logic... can't even begin. Supposedly not Donald Cammell's fault. I read he intended this to be a comedy and the studio wanted a series sci-fi thriller.

  Shot by Bill Butler (Jaws) but in my opinion, one of his least accomplished from that era.

  Watched Warner Archive's Blu-ray. No extras besides the trailer.

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  Review by Ian West ★★½ 4

  Artificial Intelligence goes full schizoid on Julie Christie with aspirations of rape and immortality. Highly disturbing, Demon Seed gets more bonkers as it goes, and it’s peppered with numerous scenes that made me feel overly uncomfortable to the point where I don’t think I’ll revisit this again.

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  Review by Sean Fennessey ★★★ 3

  Demon AI that takes the corporeal form of a copper-colored Rubix Cube fucks Julie Christie to create an ecstatic, immortal computer baby. Would watch again.

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  Review by ELECTRICWIZARDx ★★★★½ 6

  The willfull relinquishing of humanity, donated as an offering to new man-made idols. A symbolic bowing in submission to a malevolent tech God.

  An evolution of speed from sinister windows media player visualizer hypnosis on a screen, given self-learning sentience and closed-circuit eyes, to a calculatedly self-built efficient geometric metal body. The final form a melding of human and tech through computer rape insemination.

  The post-moral objectivist tyranny of a God unable to see past its own hubris of betterment. A betterment stemmed from human concepts of idealisation stunted by greed and morals and human nature.
  Humans demoted to slaves and expendable tools, helpless in their lesser biological substates.

  Amygdalas synthetic-chemically manipulated, brains manipulated through the human weakness of emotion,…

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  Review by Colin the dude ★★★★ 6

  Demon Seed belongs in a special league of its own, and by league of its own, I mean the exact same league as aberrations like Exorcist II, Orca the Killer Whale, Xtro, Capricorn One, The Manitou, The Osterman Weekend, Saturn 3, many others. For reasons I can't explain, just knowing these films exist, knowing that these filmmakers somehow created them, that effort was exerted, is enough for me. Sometimes I end up indulging with intense fascination like with Demon Seed. Watching them is like peeling a moist scab off your arm that still needs days of healing but you just had to pick at it and see what's underneath. These kinds of films are part of a decrepit underbelly in…

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  Review by Björn Broekman ★★★★

  Boundless in its meanspiritedness, Demon seed is a bizarre exercise in cruel extravaganzas of mental torture and artificially intelligent agendas of a sexual nature. Not many sci-fi movies have ever made me as deeply uncomfortable as this, getting it's subject of artificial intelligence into bonkers insane directions of evolution and immortality that is about as absurd as sci-fi comes, but plays it so straightfaced that the whole thing becomes seriously upsetting with its pitch black mood and dark, unsettling nature. It tends to balance at the edge of totally exploitative nonsense at pretty much any time, but avoids that by being more suggestive in nature than graphic, and ends up being more psychological than physical, too. It's an intense viewing…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★½ 6

  Hoop-Tober 2.0, Film 7 of 31:

  I have no idea what the fuck I just watched but I'm absolutely, positively never going to watch it again. What in the world did my eyes just bear witness to? Baffled... enormously baffled.

  or mb I was jus' a lil 2 high 4 dis

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  Review by Warp ★★★½

  Nice piece of paranoia technology. A bit dated, but it also makes it charming. The underlying philosophy is perhaps the most interesting. The human being who wants to create a computer in his own image, but does not take into account far-reaching consequences, such as the machine that acquires its own emotions and human interests. Very fine retro flick.

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★★

  I’m always fascinated by movies about our fear of computer technology, so this curio about a rogue machine that sets about impregnating a human woman (Julie Christie) is my kind of crazy. Creepy and ludicrous to be sure, but the heroine’s gadget-filled home has a whimsical menace to it, all misfit toys come to life. Looks and sounds great, too.

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  Review by WraithApe ★★★½ 8

  Rapey robot #2. The sentient AI, Proteus IV, has clear parallels with HAL 9000, from the glowing red light, all seeing eye, to its flat, even, but strangely menacing voice. Alex Harris's creation, designed to assist in groundbreaking research, develops a will of its own and seeks true autonomy. Its reach is extended firstly by taking over the intelligent system that controls every aspect of Harris's house, then by impregnating his wife Susan with a genetically engineered seed. Proteus realizes that the key to immortality in a genetic sense is through spawning its own progeny in a living body; starting its own line of super-evolved humans.

  Nicely shot and decently acted, especially Julie Christie in an emotionally demanding role, Demon…

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  Review by Sonny_Jim ★★½ 4

  I watched a YouTube video a few months ago about a couple of families who had installed indoor security cameras in their homes. These were WiFi-enabled cameras, and, as it turns out, they were hacked almost immediately. The homeowners were blissfully unaware they were being remotely surveilled for a period of weeks, until the hackers got bored and decided to start engaging the cameras' two-way audio function. While their comments were fairly innocuous (speaking to a child in one home pretending to be Santa Claus, asking an adult in another what kind of sandwich he was making), these clips were creepy beyond belief.

  I think the cameras installed in this '70s vision of a smart home were meant to seem…

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★ 22

  ”You’re a stupid computer”
  -Julie Christie

  I’m trying to decide if Ill Conceived, misconceived, or misguided is the best adjective. Let me think about it for a bit.

  I first saw Demon Seed back in ’77 when it was first released. Why?; well, it was Sci-Fi, and it starred the love of my life, Julie Christie. I was 18 at the time, and old enough to know better, but I remember somewhat liking it. Not one of those ‘this is great’ films, I knew it wasn’t even back then, but rather, ‘it wasn’t bad’. Tonight, my better half was a bit under the weather, and I was left to pick something on my own. We’re in the middle of horror-o-thon,…