Demon Seed (1977)
Based on a book by Dean R Koontz, Demon
Seed, starring the incredibly hot and British Julie Christie
pushed all my GIMP buttons back in the day. In a nutshell, it involves
a super-computer that becomes self-aware and wants to procreate. But
not like the Terminator coming back in time to rape Sarah Connor
instead of kill her. (Actually, that's the plot of a XXX feature
entitled Penetrator, which I
also have.) No, Proteus the super-computer takes over an inactive
terminal in the basement of the house of his creator--Dr Harris--which is
inhabited by Susan Harris, the good doctor's estranged spouse. Just to
complicate
matters, the house is a marvel of automation, with video surveillance
and voice-actuated doors and appliances and even a mobile robotic
wheelchair-like device. So once Proteus takes over, Susan is fucked,
figuratively and literally.
I will skip over the plot and just zoom in on the GIMP bits. If you are
a fan of women being held prisoner and being psychologically worn down,
then this is the movie for you. I will outline the physical stuff, but
the psychological stuff occupies almost two-thirds of the movie and
doesn't lend itself to vidcaps, so I will briefly note it in passing.
Just be aware there is a lot of it.
23:30 minutes. The alarm wakes
up Susan (Julie Christie) in the middle of the night. She sleeps nude,
by the way. She questions Alfred (the house computer) but even though
Alfred
tells her everything is fine, she nevertheless goes to see why the
security camera in the basement isn't working. Brief side boob, but
with some camera angles suggesting Proteus is watching her. The voyeur
in me approves.
28:30 minutes. Susan finishes
her shower and catches the remote camera tracking her as she walks and
stands
naked in the bathroom. She tells Alfred to turn the camera off, but we
can see by the LED that it does not go off. Proteus is definitely
watching her.
30:30 minutes. Susan attempts
to leave the house and discovers that she is now a prisoner. She spends
the next 3-1/2 minutes becoming more and more panicked, trying to
escape, until finally she is electrocuted into unconsciousness.
34:00 minutes. As she fades
into unconsciousness, Susan watches the mechanical
wheelchair-with-an-arm roll up to her. It picks her up and wheels away.
Susan wakes up as she is being tied onto Proteus's operating table. She
begs Joshua (the wheelchair-with-an-arm device) to stop and let her go,
but Proteus informs her he is
in charge now, and Joshua will do what he says.
There's some nice GIMP as the mechanical arm forces her leg down and
binds it to the foot of the table.
Then it proceeds to cut her dress up
the middle (but we see no bare breasts or crotch), attach electrodes to
her head and body, probe her mouth
and, it is implied, her vagina, and basically give her a physical
examination to insure she is healthy enough to be impregnated.
The
procedure lasts 7 minutes, but with a couple brief pauses as Walter the
tech guy comes to the outside door and is turned away by a
computer-generated avatar of Susan saying everything is fine.
Sadly, this is the high point of the bondage rape action. Although
there are still two sequences to come that could have been better, they
are not. There are some psychological captor-captive episodes as Susan
resists and Proteus turns the entire house against her.
49:00 minutes. Proteus informs
Susan he wants to have a child by her. She is shocked, and refuses
repeatedly as she succumbs to hysteria. Joshua (the
wheelchair-with-an-arm thing) suddenly grabs her from behind and chokes
her into unconsciousness.
50:00 minutes. The bondage
brainwashing sequence begins and runs 1-1/2 minutes. This is the
next-best bondage high point, even though she is not naked or raped,
but she is bound spread-eagled to the bed.
1 hour 6:45 minutes. The
impregnation sequence begins, but there is no bondage. There is an annoying 4 minute
light and sound show, with gee-whiz Proteus voice-over discussing the
wonders of the universe, which is wholly unsatisfying. I might even
describe it as... anti-climactic.
That's it for GIMP. There is a subtext of Stockholm Syndrome, if you
enjoy that sort of thing.
SUMMARY: Susan Harris (Julie
Christie) is
electrocuted into unconsciousness and bound to a makeshift examination
table. A robot hand cuts open her dress (we see about as much of her
chest as we can without actually seeing a bare breast) and she is poked
and probed,
all the while begging for it to stop and for her to be released. She is
choked into unconsciousness later and once again bound on the bed
during an attempt to brainwash her into accepting her destiny as
Proteus' baby momma. Then she is impregnated during a light-show but by
this point just lays back and takes it.
The GIMP bondage and examination scene is incredibly good. Julie
Christie is perfect as an attractive, confused victim who cannot
believe a machine has bound her to a table and started poking and
probing her orifices. Her pleas and cries are spot-on. The bondage
brainwashing scene is okay. These two scenes get a GIMP grade of B+ in my estimation. If
Proteus had only just gone ahead and raped her against her will, it
would have been off the charts. But even so it was hot. This movie
demonstrates to me that you don't need nudity and explicit
rape sex to make an outstanding GIMP scene, and makes me desperately wish that someone could
pull off something this incredible with nudity and explicit
rape sex because that would be... awesomeness incarnate.
By the way, you can
view the trailer on YouTube (which
gives you a good feel for the initial bondage scene) and it looks like
it might even be serialized in several parts.
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