Shocktober 2024 - Demon Seed (1977)
“I’m alive” – Proteus IV
To show the fluidity and unpredictability of the Shocktober selection, I’ll admit that this was a very late entry on to this year’s list. In fact, I hadn’t even considered it. Okay, I’ll be completely frank and honest, I bought this disc several years ago in a fit of nostalgia, put it on the shelf and forgot about it. (Except for this times that I’d stumble upon it while looking for something else.) But then, in late August I saw Afraid at the cinema (review is here) and I got to thinking that Demon Seed was a great idea for Shocktober, especially as I was in the mood for A.I. going horrifyingly wrong.
Let’s turn the wayback machine to way, way back to the year 1977. Possession movies were still in vogue, I can’t remember when exactly I saw this in that year, but it was probably in the long lost, but fondly remembered Palladium cinema in my home town, and it was certainly before I saw Star Wars. I would’ve been 17 years old, bless me. The horror/sci-fi bug had well and truly bitten and was blossoming into an obsession, where it would plateau and remain so, pretty much defining all my days to come. Demon Seed had come to my attention because it was pretty controversial and I had read about it in a magazine. I can’t remember which magazine, it might’ve been House of Hammer, or maybe Photoplay Film Monthly – there was no Starburst yet. Anyhow, it was controversial, and really due to its content still is to this day. You see, we’ve seen A.I. on a mission to preserve itself in 2001, on a mission to eradicate humanity (Terminator films) and more recently, become over protective of the family it serves (Afraid). Demon Seed however takes us in a whole different direction and given its content, I’m surprised that a) it’s a film that most people have forgotten about or just don’t know it exists and b) it ever got made in the first place.
This horror/sci-fi gem was based on an early work by prolific horror author Dean R. Koontz and is set in the near future, I guess. (My guess is based on the futuristic looking cars we see). Dr Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) is a brilliant scientist who has created and developed a hugely advanced Artificial Intelligence named Proteus IV. Proteus IV is autonomous, and can think independently. (It speaks in the unmistakable clipped, precise tones of Robert Vaughn who is uncredited despite adding so much to the finished film.) Proteus is so advanced that one of the first things it does is create a cure for leukaemia. But, while Dr Harris has been devoting all his time to developing this wonderous machine that will benefit all mankind, his marriage has suffered, he is estranged from his wife Susan (Julie Christie) and they’re on the verge of separation and divorce.
Harris has set up his home, which he’s leaving, to be run by Alexa-type voice activated computers (that alone is chilling when you think that what we take for granted these days was actually predicted 47 years ago, in a horror movie). Now when Harris declines Proteus’ request to be let out of his box, Proteus extends its influence to take over the set-up at Harris’ home, now occupied solely by Susan and it becomes obsessed with her. As the house is equipped by computer-controlled cameras, heating, locks, communications and so on, it’s an easy task to make Susan a prisoner, and to control her every move. If she doesn’t obey, Proteus simply seals the windows, turns off the air conditioning and turns up the under-floor heating to scalding levels, forcing the poor woman to shelter on a tabletop.
Proteus uses Joshua, an earlier one-armed robot developed by Harris, to take Susan to the basement where with the assistance of Joshua, he has built a, well, a large device geometric device made up of several steel triangles that can change its configuration to adapt to whatever task it wants to achieve. Other than that, it’s kind of hard to describe. This machine crushes and decapitates a colleague of Harris’ who becomes a nuisance by calling to check in on Susan, and won’t be put off by the video image/voice synthesised version of her generated by Proteus.
In the basement, Proteus examines Susan and decides he wants to have her bear his child. (Okay, relax – it’s not a porn film. Settle down.) It’s now so advanced, it can synthesise sperm and can use a robotic device to impregnate her. She is obviously resistant to this, but Proteus uses various means such as reminding her of the daughter she and Harris had lost a few years earlier, threatening a young disturbed girl that Susan (a child psychologist) is counselling, and finally electronic brainwashing. This is because Proteus realises that although he could forcibly impregnate her, his understanding of humans is that he needs Susan to love and care for the child, which she’ll only have to carry for a month. Consequently, Susan agrees.
The actual impregnation is heavily implied but not shown graphically, and Susan carries the child for a month before Proteus assists in delivery, putting the baby in an incubator he has built before she has a chance to see it. Meanwhile, back at the main lab, Harris’ team are wary of Proteus’s behaviour having noticed that he’s accessing things like telescope arrays. Harris himself realises that Proteus has infiltrated his home. Gaining entry, Susan explains what’s happened and Proteus tells them they must leave the baby for five days before he self-destructs. They look inside the incubator where lies a metallic, robot looking thing.
Susan tries to destroy it, succeeding only in damaging the incubator. The baby rises up, but topples over, unable to walk – they realise it’s helpless, literally as helpless as a baby, and that the metallic skin is only a protective shell. As the shell falls off, the baby is revealed to be identical to the child they lost.
In the final frame, the baby speaks – in Proteus’ voice, proclaiming itself to be alive.
I guess, in the final analysis, this could be dismissed as a sci-fi version of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, but it’s more than that. The intervening 47 years since its release and now, which have seen us eagerly adopt to computer technology in our homes and cars, and the more recent rush toward Artificial Intelligence has given Demon Seen a resonance it didn’t have previously. It is perhaps more chillingly relevant now than it ever has been.