Hamstrung in post-production and caught in the unfortunate collapse of Palace Pictures, director Richard Stanley's long cherished dream project finally limps on screen in what must arguably be the first time a director's cut has appeared before the money-men's would-be commercial abortion.

It opens almost wordlessly as mysterious American hitcher Robert Burke emerges from the desert heat-daze in flowing coat, wide hat and serious sideburns. The woman who picks him up ends the night mutilated, her blood ritually smearing the walls in elaborate occult symbols. Burke it appears is a demonic serial killer, stalking the Namib desert laying prey to lost souls, helping them to their death, and embraces young almost suicidal runaway South African wife Chelsea Field as his latest victim in a curious romance.

Pursuing the odd couple across country is black cop Zakes Mokae, haunted by a failed marriage and death of his son, who takes his cues from a drive-in projectionist-cum-mystic and drags Field's dozy husband along for the ride as they converge on a desert ghost town for the extended climax.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of Stanley's picture is that, nominally at least, it has some basis in fact (this particular African serial killer already being immortalised on screen in the little seen 1989 John Hurt movie Windprints.) The second, that given the obvious gross-out potential of the material, the writer/director opts instead for an elaborate confection of picturesque road movie, mystical spaghetti Western a la the lunatic Alejandro Jodorowsky, and surprisingly hardcore horror.

Stanley made his name with the shallow, deliberately focused techno-violence of Hardware, but here elects to establish himself as a 'real' film-maker, filling Dust Devil with protracted tracking-shots across the desert sands, intense close-ups, and epic frame-ups of the equally epic landscapes his Namib locations offer, his camera making commendable use of place and more than justifying an insistence they shoot in Africa. Parallel to this, Stanley is just as specific about period, placing his movie in 1989 as the UN arrive to replace the withdrawing South Africans. This is particularly echoed in the beautifully mounted final moments so that for all the vivid fantasy, the film retains a commendable political resonance, especially in the racial tensions that inform much of Mokae's investigation.

Homage is well-served in here, be it in the Leone-esque framing, the oblique (and specific) references to Dario Argento, a nod to Tarkovsky, or the (maybe unintentional) steal from Donald Cammell's astonishing White of the Eye. Against them all Stanley is not afraid of tossing in his own unique flourishes - most notably a wonderfully surreal sand-filled cinema - and underlines the lot with an elaborate soundtrack of the odd well-chosen song (Hank Williams and his ilk), a bold quake-in-my-wake score from Simon Boswell, and everything in the desert turned-up to eleven.

The problem for Stanley in seeking to recreate the success of his first film comes from his backers not fully appreciating this very individual vision - a much truncated version running in other countries, shorn of the well-realised and indispensable dream sequences, is the subject of the director's ire. The film falls essentially between a rock and a hard place, being simply too slow and arty for the gore-gore boys, and too in your face for mainstream tastes. Maybe some performances are a little too mannered and the curiously handled dialogue will fail to find many friends, but after the veritable dearth of serious adult horror movies in recent years, it is comforting to see something so studiedly individual and intriguing hot on the heels of Rose's equally commendable Candyman. For students of the oddball, Dust Devil is a fiery cult-item waiting to happen.