Film Review: Demon Seed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This film is a lost little gem from 1977. It’s what happens when you take the plotline of Rosemary’s Baby and you take out Satan and put HAL from 2001 in his place. Yes, you read me correctly this is a film about a woman who is raped and impregnated by an evil computer. I’ve seen them all around here, raped and impregnated by aliens, Raped and impregnated by creatures with tentacles, raped by a giant maggot. The concept of a woman being raped by a computer hadn’t occurred to me.This film actually works though, I think.
The premise of Demon Seed is the woman is raped by the machine in order to create the man/machine synthesis complete. It's amazing.
It’s weird the idea kind of is that the computer, Proteus, is composed internally of organic material and that it has figured out how to create synthetic DNA. The computer has an interesting little Oedipus complex insofar as it chooses the wife of its inventor. All the functions in the house are controlled by the computer so the house actually locks her in and holds her against her will. I’ll let the feminist film critics have a field day with that one-the woman is raped by her suburban home. That’s a good one.
This film has never gotten much attention. That’s too bad because it’s actually pretty good. Julie Christie is in it she’s a reasonably good actress. Dean Koontz is probably an underrated author.
There’s the whole bit about the computer being trapped in a box. I kind of like that. He says to the scientist “when are you going to let me out of this box?”. It’s because the computer has no real body and he wants to exist in the physical realm. His eyes are everywhere in the form of video cameras too.
The women gives birth to a sort of computer-boy fusion. It is very strange. There’s also all kinds of trippy, psychedelic looking images that are supposed to be the insides of the computer’s mind or something like that. I’m not sure it makes any sense. I’m not sure I care whether it makes any sense. It’s Demon Seed, only Demon Seed is Demon Seed. Boy does it look like and sound like an old 70’s film, too.
It’s pretty sweet. I’m surprised it never got a bigger following. It’ll freak you out-you won’t trust your laptop around your girlfriend for a week.
It’s hilarious, the woman gives birth to HAL.