Julie Christie is trapped in a suburban nightmare in Donald Cammell’s DEMON SEED
DEMON SEED (Donald Cammell, 1977)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, August 30, 1:00, 5:20, 9:40
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Back at Film Forum for the first time in seventeen years, the “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” series continues on August 30 with an inspired double feature of movies dealing with alternative forms of motherhood. First up is Donald Cammell’s creepy, claustrophobic 1977 futuristic thriller Demon Seed. Based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz, the film stars a surprisingly game Julie Christie as Susan Harris, a frustrated housewife whose husband, Alex (Fritz Weaver), is the leader of a team that has built a master computer known as Proteus (voiced by Robert Vaughn). When Alex goes off for several months to further Proteus’s already impressive attributes, the supercomputer starts developing a mind of its own, locking Susan in the house and deciding she must give birth to its child. Cammell, who codirected Performance with Nicolas Roeg, fills Demon Seed with trippy, psychedelic visuals and cool technological flourishes, along with an electronic score by Ian Underwood and Lee Ritenour supplementing Jerry Fielding’s central musical themes. The film delves into suburban paranoia with Toffler-esque flare and an Orwellian fear of artificial intelligence. The film harkens back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project while also influencing such future films as John Badham’s WarGames, which also names its supercomputer “Joshua” and casts Weaver look-alike John Wood as computer creator Dr. Stephen Falken.
Mia Farrow is trapped in an urban nightmare in Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY
ROSEMARY’S BABY (Roman Polanski, 1968)
Friday, August 30, 2:50, 7:10
www.filmforum.org
Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein has paired Demon Seed with another gripping tale that offers a frightening look at mothering evil. Based on the novel by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby is one of the greatest psychological horror films ever made. When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) move into the fancy Upper West Side apartment complex the Bramford (the Dakota), ready to start a family, Rosemary slowly grows suspicious of Guy’s new friends, particularly the sweet old couple next door (Oscar winner Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). The paranoid thriller is filled with truly scary scenes, both inside the apartment and on the streets of New York City. Like Demon Seed, it also includes a crazed conception scene and similar themes leading to their inevitable conclusions. While Rosemary’s Baby is by far the better film, with well-flushed-out characters and genuine scares that are not driven by technology but instead by inner (and outer) demons, it makes for a great double feature with Cammell’s truly whack Demon Seed. “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” continues through September 5 with such other double features as the 1958 and 1986 versions of The Fly, Quatermass and the Pit and Village of the Damned, It Came from Beneath the Sea and 20 Million Miles to Earth, and The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds.