The film stars Robert Burke as Hitch, a mysterious man who wanders the deserts in Namibia and is wanted by the police in connection with the death of a woman whose blood was used in a supernatural ceremony.

As police begin investigating the murders, they seem to trace back to Hitch and Wendy discovers the man has supernatural powers.

Dust Devil was shot in Namibia after March 1990, when Stanley presented his script to producer JoAnne Sellar, whom he had previously worked with on his first film Hardware.

The film was released in United Kingdom following the demise of Palace Pictures under an end credit of Dust Devil: The Final Cut.

In Namibia, a Sangoma named Joe Niemand recites a story about Dust Devils—anthropomorphized desert winds that roam the highways to hunt and kill humans.

Ben Mukurob receives a phone call with strange voices speaking, as does Wendy Robinson in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Wendy walks into the desert past Mark and the car, lies on the road and pulls over a fleet of army Casspirs.

[5] Dust Devil was shot entirely on location in Namibia, and re-interprets the story of a South African serial killer known as Nhadiep.

[4] Dust Devil was made from a previous work of Stanley's, an unfinished 16mm student short film shot in 1984[6] about bizarre murders taking place around the town of Bethanie.

"[7] Stanley also mentioned an influence of Michele Soavi's film The Devil's Daughter, by using "his idea of shimmering Virgin Mary blues to similarly represent forces of God.

[8] In April 1992, Palace Pictures began experiencing financial problems, causing them to pull out of distributing the film in the United Kingdom.

[9] In February 1992, Palace who was on the verge of financial collapse, asked Stanley to accept a cut that was a compromise between the original version and the Miramax edit.

[9][10][2][6] An 80-minute cut of the film that was not colour-graded was shown in some European territories prior to 1994 which Richard Stanley described as "an effort to liberate blocked funds and has subsequently been withdrawn with the consent of all parties.

[12][13] In 2006 these documentaries plus the commentaries were included as extra features on Subversive Cinema’s deluxe limited edition DVD set of Richard Stanley’s approved “Final Cut” of Dust Devil, which runs 108 minutes.

In Sight & Sound, Kim Newman described the film as a "more personal effort than Hardware", and that "for all its lean boogey man strengths, this is mainly a hallucinatory picture: Stanley delivers the requisite shocks with a buff's care and enthusiasm, but is obviously more interested in eerie desert images like a valley said to be created by the slithering of a giant snake at the dawn of time and other unsettling touches."

"[2] Derek Elley of Variety called it "a brilliant mess", "overflowing with ideas, visual invention and genre references but saddled with a weak, unfocused script.

"[6] In his book Horror and Science Fiction Film IV, Donald C. Willis stated that Dust Devil was "handsomely photographed" but also "pretentious" with a "tired" ending.