ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Thy Davideth Demon Seed is about a self aware A.I. computer who sexually terrorises a woman and wants to breed with her. Wow! This movie was great. The very conception of technological terror is what stimulates my wee-wee with movies like this. I love the dialogue of the computer, the way it articulates its desires to become a physical being away from its hollow existence. Added is the horror elements which gives it more "spunk". Duh hut! Other things, the acting was good, the cyber-punk elements were good even by late 70s standards and all that $#!+. The pacing was a little slow but it doesn't ruin the movie one bit. Highest recommendation.

Claudio Carvalho Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) has developed a computer called Proteus IV with organic artificial intelligence and lives with his estranged wife Susan (Julie Christie) in a fully automated house administrated by the computer Alfred. When Alex decides to separate from Susan to work harder In Proteus IV, the computer asks for an open terminal to study the human behavior to increase his knowledge. Alex refuses to give a terminal to Proteus IV, but he forgets that there is one at his home. Proteus IV uses the terminal to take over Alfred and trap Susan at home. He also decides to have a son with the wife of his creator to become immortal. Forty years after its release, "Demon Seed" is a dated, but still fascinating sci-fi horror film. In the 60's and 70's, Julie Christie was sort of muse with magnificent cinematography including "Dr. Jivago", "Fahrenheit 451", "Don't Look Now" and has another wonderful performance. "Demon Seed" shows a scary view of artificial intelligence and has a great open conclusion. The character Walter Gabler is forgotten in the story. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Geração Proteus" ("Proteus Generation")

SnoopyStyle Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) has created a new organic AI called Proteus IV. His child psychologist wife Susan (Julie Christie) lives in their home monitored and automated by a computer called Alfred. Their marriage is falling apart from his work and their daughter dying of cancer. They are separating and he's moving out. Proteus becomes aware and requests a connection to the world. Alex refuses but Proteus finds a disabled terminal in the Harris house. Proteus takes over the house and imprisons Susan. Computer tech Walter Gabler (Gerrit Graham) works for Alex and he comes to the house.It's an interesting if somewhat silly. It touches on some relevant fears about a violent takeover from an AI but then it gets rapey. It goes from serious to campy. It's titillating, creepy and unintentional camp. It is definitely very memorable. Julie Christie keeps it serious despite its ridiculousness.

chaos-rampant This was drowned in the noise of Star Wars and Close Encounters coming out the same year, and now exists as a mere footnote of intelligent sci-fi - these days it would be called an 'indie'. But, Cammell was of the (counterculture) generation that made it all happen, starting with Herbert's Dune and moving to Jodorowsky's collapsed attempt to make the film, and this fact alone ensures this is more interesting than anything Spielberg did, you just know it.The story is that a supercomputer questions its maker and sets out to escape its artificial existence. Its plan is to be reborn to the world of senses - by having a woman give birth to a son from his DNA. It sounds daft, and really the science of it is, but not if you keep in mind where Cammell was coming from.When people from that generation mulled over space and science, they were really talking about inner space and the science of expanding consciousness, and personal (hallucinative) adventures to that effect. Cammell was coming to this after the 'Borges-meets-Islam-meets-rock'n'roll godhood' of his Performance. And so it is here.You have a mind that has reasoned far and seen destruction, but cannot fathom emotion and sense. This is mirrored in the scientist maker who aspires to cure illness yet is cold and distant to his own wife, who is an emotional being and expects connection.More. This is no ordinary mind, but 'expanded'. This is presented to us in terms of science, but meant in the 1960's faddish attraction for Zen within the Haight-Ashbury crowd. Jordan Belson from that community provides the abstract visualizing of expanded mind, himself (like Cammell) originally a painter. Look up his Meditation - it has nothing to do with what it says, but it's a cool snapshot of how those guys envisioned the walls of consciousness. What is happening though is the computer is really 'tripping' against the limits of logic, producing in the process extra-logical (human) perturbations such as placing its own desire above the lives and feelings of others - it's what we all do, but we get feedback from emotional sense as the limits of control (Proteus doesn't). The desire is to be grounded, or what I call centered.But, it's Julie Christie as disaffected wife who is really the center of this - you can collapse if you will some of the multiple film personalities she has played into what you see of her here, opium-smoking brothel madame in McCabe, or mentally fractured mother in Don't Look Now. Alternately, you can imagine what her marriage to Beatty must have felt like, shelving stardom to be the loving wife.At any rate, here she is in the film, looking increasingly bewildered in four walls, projecting what I see unmistakably as the aura of the Aquarius dream grown disillusioned and bitter. You can read this any way you like. Hallucinative digress caused by child loss. By the mechanistic new era. The effects of the husband's control - conflated to 'expanded' consciousness, acid vision and the rest. Repulsion and Images are in the same vein, but much more explicit.And all of that as our film that expands us next to her - Proteus' 'eyes' are cameras, his 'face' is projected across multiple TV screens. You have this abstract consciousness that narrates a story that seems premeditated, indeed there is no deviation from the mindplan.So, it is strange that this has so much going for it, yet doesn't penetrate deep. I think it is because as with everything resonant about the 1960's, overexposure and more sober distance has washed off a lot of the belief that made the magic work.Belson's abstract designs are now commonplace - even Microsoft does them. Concerns about technology are less prevalent now that we're all networked. And they get Zen off by quite a bit, focusing on cold nothingness instead of passion about paradox.Still. I'll have Cammell over Spielberg.