Dementia 13

******SPOILERS****** Early 1960's collaboration of director Francis Ford Coppala and film producer Roger Corman of a horror story set in and around Ireland's Haloran Castle. The movie has really two stories that intersect each other halfway into the movie which sets off a series of brutal ax murders which for the time, the early 1960's, are as graphic as anything seen in films back in those days.

John Haloran, Peter Reed, dies of a sudden heart attack, which seemed self-induced, rowing a boat with his wife Louise, Luana Anders, on board one night. Getting nothing from John's estate if he dies before she does which was stated in John's will Louise frantically tries to hide John's body by throwing him overboard into the lake. Louise ties an anchor to his waist to keep John from floating to the surface and being discovered.

Back home Louise writes a letter attributing it to John stating that he's gone on an urgent business trip to New York and may not be back for some time. Louise then plans to talk John's emotionally unstable mother Lady Haloran, Eithne Dunne, into re-writing the will and include her in it with or without the survival of her husband. The next day John's older brother Richard, William Campball, is set to see his fiancée Kane, Mary Mitchel, who's arriving from the USA to meet Richard's family in Ireland. When Kane is picked up by Richard's younger brother William, Brent Patton, at the airport William tells Kane that tomorrow is the seventh anniversary of their 13 year-old sister Kathleen's, Barbara Downing, tragic death and the family is having it's annual ceremony to commemorate it.

Louise knowing how much Lady Haloran misses her beloved daughter Kathleen tries to manipulate her by trying to prove to her that she's somehow in touch with the dead Kathleen through communications with her from the "other side". This is to get her to like Louise, who Lady Haloran despises, and get her to change the will that she wrote up that left Louise out in the cold if her husband dies in terms of his inheritance. Trying to convince Lady Haloran that she's really in communication with her daughter Louise tries to stage an event by taking some toys from Kathleen's room and planting them at the bottom of the pound where she drowned seven years ago.Louise plans at the right moment to have the toys rise to the surface in Lady Haloran presence to prove, to Lady Haloran, that she's telling her the truth.

What Louise doesn't know, by reviving suppressed memories of Kathleen's death, is that she set off and put into motion the person who was responsible for it to commit a number of bloody ax murders with Louise being his first victim.

Despite a shoe string budget and a unknown cast "Dementia 13" is a pretty effective Horror/Mystery movie.The murderer is more or less reviled almost at the beginning of the film but in such a way to make you not realize it. In a good attempt of misdirection by Francis Ford Coppala the audience is made to look somewhere or at someone else in the movie which keeps you guessing who the killer is until the very end. Coppala's use of striking black and white photography as well as the effective use of sounds and shadows greatly adds to the suspense as well as creepiness of the movie.

There are many plot points throughout this film that would make great horror or suspense movies in themselves. The gold-digging wife who plans to change the will of her mother-in-law. The guilt a family feels about the death of their daughter. A haunted Irish castle. An axe murderer loose at a family gathering where a will is being discussed. The trusted family doctor who is, in fact, a puppetmaster, making the family hold onto a tragic past. Unfortunately, none of these intriguing plot points are milked to their fullest advantage. Literally, Coppola has five movies in one...but none of them are finished. When John dies and Louise covers up the death, that's the last we hear about it. This could have been used later. Etc. etc. Instead, we get a mish mash of plot points with bad acting and bad dialogue that are important but never revisited and used to weave a cohesive plot.

Dementia 13 is Francis Ford Coppola's first flick, his directorial debut. Yeah, that's right. The man that brought you Apocalypse Now and The Godfather worked first in horror. And worked well I might add. Under the producing eye of Roger Corman, this is one of the earlier additions to the slasher genre, and it's not bad. A few flaws keep this one from being a black and white masterpiece. My biggest peeve with the film is the fact that it's not real hard to see who the killer is. They should have done a better job of masking his face. There are a few priceless scenes though. The radio being tossed into the water, and the muffling of the music is quite cool. I love the part where the killer is dragging the girl's body by the wrist, it's rather wicked. It also has perhaps one of the earliest decapitations. Patrick Magee is fabulous as the aristocratic doctor. This hard to find gem is worth looking for, especially for old school horror fans.

A woman's husband dies of a heart attack shortly before they are to visit his family. She dumps his body into a lake and tells the family that he was called away on business, while she schemes to ensure she collects his inheritance. Her scheming is cut short, however, by the appearance of an ax-wielding killer out for blood.

Of note today as being Francis Ford Coppola's feature film debut, or at least his first credited one. Because it's from a director as accomplished as Coppola, there seems to be more thought put into analyzing Dementia 13 than is necessary. It is exactly what it appears to be: an early slasher film made on a shoestring budget and produced by the master of the cheapie, Roger Corman. It's not a bad movie. It's a little slow at times and the script doesn't always make sense, but it's a perfectly serviceable movie of its type. It has some style that one could point to as a sign of Coppola's yet-to-emerge talent. It also provided the line about "an American girl raised on promises" that was cribbed by Tom Petty for his song "American Girl," which I thought was a neat bit of trivia.

When Alfred Hitchcock's Marion Crane (of "Psycho") stepped into the shower and met her fate, it kicked off a slew of stark, grisly chillers about nutcases, often wielding butcher knives or axes. This entry has the distinction of being one of Coppola's earliest directorial efforts and it is clearly influenced by Hitchcock, though without his budget or seasoned mastery. Anders plays a rather nagging wife who is visiting her husband's ancestral castle with him just in time to "celebrate" the anniversary of his kid sister's funeral. He, his two brothers and his mother gather annually to pay tribute to the little girl who was drowned on the premises years before. One brother (Campbell) is an angry sculptor with an American fiancee (Mitchel.) The other (Patton) is a gentle, sort of shy type. The mother (Dunne) can't get past the death of her daughter and faints on cue each year at the ceremony. Not long into the film, one death sets off a chain of events that unleashes a couple of other ones to where no one at the castle is safe and the audience is often not certain who the mad killer is (though veteran fans of horror/suspense shouldn't have that much trouble figuring it out.) The film is far from perfect, but given the unbelievable budgetary and filming restraints, it does manage to conjure up some creeps and story interest. The only part that really drags is the section involving an overly inquisitive doctor (Magee.) Otherwise, there is creativity in the filming of the deaths and a nice sense of atmosphere throughout (even if almost none of these Irish characters has anything resembling an accent!) There are slicker fright films out there, but this one wins points for accomplishing pretty much with precious little to work with.