B-Movies with Marg: Dementia 13

Watch this trailer:

Based on that, it is pretty obvious that Dementia 13 is pretty terrifying. Yes sir, you could become so shocked by the experience of watching the film that you go on a killing spree yourself! And since I've seen the film, I guess everyone is lucky that I haven't tried to axe everybody I see. Frankly, I waited a few days to write this review just so that I wouldn't make a liar out of myself in saying that. I certainly didn't want to claim to be unaffected only to have the influence of Dementia 13 hit me seventy-two hours later in the grocery store. 

Oh, but of course Dementia 13 is just nothing like that preview at all! Not a bit! It's an attempt at a horror movie, sure, and certainly lacks the tongue-in-cheek appeal of the films directed by Roger Corman himself - this wasn't one of his directorial projects however - Dementia 13 belonged to none other than the eventually great Francis Ford Coppola. Only in his early twenties, this was Coppola's first time in the director's chair for a mainstream film, and he was basically hired by producer Corman to make a Psycho-esque picture. 

Coppola had yet to find his feet as a director, and was not in love with the material. There is little indication that the director of Dementia 13 could go on to achieve The Godfather less than a decade later. It wasn't an entirely clunky film, with a few skillful shots:

Wasn't raining.

Much of the film was over dubbed in post production at Corman's insistence, along with additional footage which Coppola had no part in directing. The story itself was infuriatingly convoluted, full of plot holes, and all sorts of other typical B-Movie junk. For example, the film is set in Ireland, and the main characters are an Irish family - and yet, not an accent to be heard. Not even a shitty attempt at an accent!

Essentially, the plot is that the Irish family (a mother and her three sons) gather together every year to mourn and recreate the funeral of the daughter who died years ago as a little girl. This year, one son brings his scheming, greedy wife, who covers up his unexpected death by heart attack in a bizarre attempt to convince his mother to change her will or something? Another son is about to be married, so he brings his fiancee along even though the two young women look basically identical, so it's very confusing to people watching the film nearly 50 years later. And the youngest son is a little... off. And the mother is a little... also off. Her daughter-in-law (the scheming one) tries to convince her that the little girl is a ghost now. And then a bunch of people get axed. 

Spooky stuff. 

Picking her right up by the noggin!

My favourite continuity goof (of which their are many) in the movie is during a scene where the daughter-in-law, in an attempt to trick everyone into believing that the little girl ghost is sending messages from beyond, dives into the pond where the girl died to plant haunting evidence (some dolls on strings). She strips down before going into the water and is wearing white underwear and bra. She jumps in the pond, and in the underwater scene, is clearly wearing darker under garments. I get it, the white would have been too naughty looking while wet... but why on earth didn't they think of that before giving her a white costume for the dry part of the scene? 

Taking a huge note from Psycho, she gets bumped off quite early too, despite being the character followed from the start. Also like Psycho, we immediately pick up with another blonde (the other son's bride-to-be), and the story goes on except she's not trying to convince anyone that they're being haunted. She just wants to get married to her haggard ol' boyfriend but also spend altogether too much alone time with his younger brother who keeps having murderous flashbacks. 

Although chaste by today's standards, Dementia 13 is more explicit than the other Corman movies I've reviewed, with far more ax-gore and ladies in their knickers. This can be explained by a number of factors, not exclusive to the shifting mood of the 1960s, its young director's desire to shock, and Coppola's work on girly-movies even earlier in his then-short career. 

-Marg

@acuteinsomnia