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Dementia 13
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Reviewed by Nick Burton
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The early ‘60s were something of a golden age for interesting B-horror films (particularly in the wake of Hitchcock’s 1960
Pyscho), with memorably creepy work such as Herk Harvey’s brilliant 1962 Carnival of Souls, Curtis Harrington’s 1961 Night Tide (with Dennis Hopper as a sailor who falls in love with a real-life mermaid), Roger Corman’s Poe films and the first films by Italian horror maestro Mario Bava (Black Sunday). While in the long run Dementia 13, a no-budget American International production and Pyscho rip-off filmed cheaply, may not be the best film of the period, it is nevertheless an atmospheric, eerie Grand Guignol style shocker, written and directed by a young Francis Ford Coppola.
The film begins with a terrific pre-credit sequence: Louise (the late Luana Anders, a Corman /A.I.P. regular) and her husband John Haloran (Peter Read) on the black waters of an Irish lake on a late-night rowing trip, a portable radio blaring a faux Gene Vincent style rockabilly song. We find out, as John rows the little boat, that Louise will be cut out of the family will if John, who has a bad heart, dies. Sure enough, John has a heart attack in the boat. Louise tries to get to shore, but it’s too late. Not wanting to miss out on the Haloran money, she dumps the body – and the still sputtering radio – into the murky waters. |
 Night of the living dead Francis Ford Coppola VHS Tape - $4.49 Rated - NR |
A duplicitous blonde who bears more than a passing resemblance to Janet Liegh’s character in Psycho, Louise delays informing the Haloran Matriarch, Lady Haloran, about John’s death, giving her more time to figure out how to get on her good side. In the meantime, Kane (Mary Mitchell) arrives from the U.S.A., the fiancée of the hot-headed Richard Haloran. ("You can tell she’s an American girl," Louise says of Kane, "She’s been raised on promises" – thereby supplying Tom Petty with the lyrics to "American Girl.") After a strange memorial ceremony for Kathleen Haloran, Lady Haloran’s most beloved child – drowned in the pond of Castle Haloran as a little girl – Louise sees a way to get to Lady H. She tells her that she hears the voice of Kathleen’s ghost at night. Figuring that manufacturing evidence of the ghost will do the trick and get her a permanent spot in the will, Louise devises a plan to have some of the little girl’s dolls surface from the bottom of the pond where Kathleen drowned. But as Louise emerges screaming from the pond after seeing Kathleen’s perfectly preserved corpse underwater, she is gruesomely axed to death by a dark figure.
After a local poacher (Karl Schanzer) is also (graphically) beheaded after seeing Kathleen’s body, it seems that there is a maniac on the loose. Could it be the hotheaded abstract sculptor Richard (William Campbell)? What about his brother, the ascot-wearing Billy (Bart Patton), who is plagued by unsettling nightmares? The family physician, Dr. Caleb, played by a wonderfully cynical and witty Patrick Magee, is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, not to mention the bottom of the Castle’s murky pond.
While it’s pretty easy to guess whodunit fairly early, Coppola’s screenplay has enough chilly moments and scenes of shock to keep it going through its much too brief 75 minutes, and the film builds towards its shocking denouement with a lot of stylish goosebump raising. The actors, particularly Anders and Magee, are just fine, and the film has an undeniably creepy atmosphere. There is fine work here by many of the Corman /A.I.P. Crew, most notably Ronald Stein’s wonderfully evocative score. (It should be noted that the second unit director on this film was B-movie legend Jack Hill, whose films include the great horror comedy Spider Baby as well as many ‘70s blaxploitation films.) It might not make you forget the really great films Coppola made (I’ll take The Conversation and Apocalypse Now), but it’s such an effective little film that you hope Coppola eventually returns to the genre someday with something more substantial than the beautiful but limp Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
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Nick Burton lives in Newport Beach, California. His fiction has appeared in many small press and web publications, including: Chronicles Of Fiction, Pauper, and of course Pif.