The original cut of Dust Devil, delivered in late 1991, ran at 120 minutes. The production company/UK distributor Palace Pictures then cut it down to 95 minutes and would've probably went on releasing the film - if it weren't for their bankruptcy a few months later. PolyGram bought the remains and to them the film wasn't a priority. April 1992, Dust Devil's post-production was now halted.

During this time the US release fell victim of The Silence of the Lambs boom, i.e. the tsunami of serial killer movies. Miramax, the overseas distributor, cut their version down to 87 minutes in order to make it more of a "mystical murder movie", removing all dream and supernatural imagery. They also redubbed the narrative and regraded the film stock to deep red in the vein of Hardware. This cut, unfortunately, is the most seen one. Miramax premiered it at Cannes and released it on laserdisc (in pan&scan!).

Greatest differences between the two cuts are the following:

Scenes concerning Dust Devil's origins and emotions have been reduced or scrapped altogether.
Wendy's and Mark's tumult relationship has been cut down.
Ben Mukorob's screen time has been considerably reduced, nixing the dreams of his son and his otherwordly connection with Dust Devil.

A subsequent release got chopped off even more more. "The stateside version runs at 70 minutes, the full version runs at 105. It only achieved 70 minutes because they run the music from the end roll twice, to bring it up from 68 or something. They needed to meet 70 minutes, and they just improvised and brought in an extra two minutes of black screen music at the end, just to meet contractual obligations." [Richard Stanley in Sex & Guts Magazine #3.]

In Italy, Dust Devil was released under the title Demoniaca. That version runs at 82 minutes, and Stanley himself feels the film is nearly unregocnizable. The French version is called Le souffle du Démon, running at about 84 minutes. If anyone knows more about these two versions, let me know.

January 1993. With the help of Channel Four, one of films investors, the original negative and audio were found, which opened the window to create a new master copy. Stanley himself invested £44,000 into reassembling and re-grading the film to it's original form. Unfortunately the film never completely got back to what it once was. Scenes were lost since the cast wasn't available to come back and do automatic dialog replacement, some originally planned optical effects were scrapped due financial reasons, and so on. It's also said to have gotten some precuts to the violence from PolyGram, most notably the scene in which Dust Devil cuts Saarke Haarhoff's back open with his Midgard Serpent knife. The scene is trimmed to end with him only revealing the knife. The resulting print, titled The Final Cut and running at 105 minutes, is the only one in existence.

Stanley also asked film critic Mark Kermode to do some 'post-production propaganda'. Kermode saw the shortened version, agreed that it was "absolutely terrible" and started a petition. Finally in March 1993, Dust Devil was granted a small theatrical release, being one of the last films to open in Scala. Polygram released the final director's cut on video and Channel Four has televised it numerous times.

Casting [top]

The casting of the central roles turned out to be not too different from Hardware. Originally Stanley had Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table) in mind for the character of Wendy. The film's financiers weren't satisfied with her and the same went to Stanley's second suggestion, who was none other than Stacey Travis from Hardware. The decision to cast Chelsea Field was basically a last-minute compromise.

At the official Fields of the Nephilim site, the registration-requiring Watchman section to be precise, vocalist Carl McCoy suggests he was originally offered the male lead in the film, but had to turn it down. This could very well be true and when set in contrast to Stanley's comments on the character McCoy played in his FotN music videos, it would create an insteresting continuation.

"Eventually the lead singer became a character called The Preacher Man, this frightening religious zealot in a post-holocaust world. [...] He looked like the same guy in Hardware. They are essentially the same character."
[Richard Stanley in Sex & Guts interview.]

"The main character [in Dust Devil] is a borderline demon straight out of popular mythology. [...] He's the basic nomad archetype, which is a figure I've always been obsessed with. He appears in my promos, he's the nomad in Hardware who unearths Mark 13, so Dust Devil is the next logical step."
[Richard Stanley in Fangoria interview.]

Voices from the Deep [top]

Composer Simon Boswell on Dust Devil: "I'm still quite proud of Dust Devil, which we did [after Hardware]. I remember while working on that I heard something on the radio which really piqued my curiosity. I called the BBC and was told it was Mongolian throat singing, called khoomi voices. It was just right for what I had in mind, which was not to make a travelogue. One thing I hate is to be areaspecific." [Originally appeared on Neither Shallow nor Grave.]

"[The soundtrack] was released by Varèse Sarabande only in Germany through its distributor their, Colosseum (VSD-5395). Tom DeMary reports:

'The film was heavily edited for the U.S. and flopped (though I like it quite a lot), so I guess Varese cancelled the release. It is pretty serious for a horror film. Director Richard Stanley's previous film Hardware was too in-your-face for my taste, but Dust Devil is eerily mythic. The bad news: the CD has lots of the narration from the film. The good news: some of the narration is not in the U. S. prints. The music is synthed, but good in the film. Chorus, heavy drum sounds, and tolling bell-reminds me a little of an Italian western.'" [Originally appeared at Film Score Monthly.]

A CD-R copy of the Dust Devil soundtrack is available at Vidjunkie.

[back]

[main]

[top]