Dementia 13 (1963)

******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.

Fmovies: In Ireland, the greedy American Louise (Luana Anders) is disappointed with the will of her mother-in-law Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunne) on the eve of Kathleen's seventh memorial ceremony. While rowing a small boat during the night in the pond of the Haloran Castle with Louise, John Haloran (Peter Read) has a fatal heart attack. Louise is aware that she will not receive the share of the inheritance if the death of John is discovered, so she dumps his body in the pond. Then she forges a farewell letter from John to his mother telling that he needs to go back to New York, and she separates some clothes in John's suitcase to simulate his travel. Louise succeeds to convince Lady Haloran and her sons Richard (William Campbell) and Billy (Bart Patton) about John's urgent business trip. Later she talks to Billy about the spooky old castle and Billy tells that the place is haunted by his sister Kathleen, who drowned in the pond many years ago driving his mother to the edge. On the next morning, Richard's American fiancée Kane (Mary Mitchel) arrives for the family's reunion and the Machiavellian Louise approaches to Lady Haloran showing sympathy for her feelings for Kathleen. During the night, Louise goes to Kathleen's bedroom and gets some toys; then she dives in the pond to prepare a prank to lure Lady Haloran. When she returns, she is attacked by a man with a machete and dies; when she is not found in the castle, the family believes she has traveled without saying goodbye. Later, Lady Haloran's doctor Justin Caleb (Patrick Magee) decides to investigate the small lake and the mystery about the Haloran Castle, disclosing a hidden secret in the dysfunctional family.

It is curious to see "Dementia 13" in 2009, and the greatest attraction is the name of the director and writer Francis Coppola (without the Ford) in one of his earliest works. Produced by Roger Corman, the King of the B-Movies (especially in the 60's), this black-and-white feature has an abrupt beginning without any previous development of characters or situation. Then the flawed and predictable story of dementia and family curse visibly follows the style of Alfred Hitchcock. I found in IMDb that the original title would be "Dementia"; however, it was added a "13" since there is a 1955 movie with the same title. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Demência 13" ("Dementia 13")

Francis Ford Coppola's debut horror flick is sometimes hailed as a kind of forgotten masterpiece, which is downright preposterous. Bored with his work as an assistant director on THE YOUNG RACERS he wrote a screenplay, and asked Corman for $22,000 to let him film it on the same sets used for THE YOUNG RACERS. He shot the film in two weeks and the shooting of the two films at the same sets simultaneously only worsened the quality of the film. I must admit, made with this 99 cent budget, it's a comparatively well crafted horror mystery with some good scenes but overall pretty dull with a story that makes little sense.

The members of the Haloran family gather at their ancestral Irish castle to attend the annual commemoration of the death of Kathleen, the daughter of the family who drowned in the lake on their estate six years earlier. One of the sons in the family, John Haloran, dies of a heart-attack while listening to Elvis on the radio. His gold-digging wife Louise then dumps the body in the pond and pretends he has returned to New York, because she only gets part of the family inheritance when her husband is alive. When staying at the castle she begins an elaborate ruse to convince Lady Haloran that her drowned daughter Kathleen is still alive, but soon, she is killed by an axe-murderer, who proceeds to kill of the rest of the family one by one. What follows is: who's the psycho? Much inspired by Hitchcock's PSYCHO, it bears little relation plotwise, let alone in suspense. Coppola puts more emphasis on graphic violence than suspense and the story doesn't make much sense. With some good scenes it kept me watching till the end, but that's about it.

Not a complete waste of time though, as Coppola met his future wife Eleonor Neil on the set.

Camera Obscura --- 6/10

Dementia 13 fmovies. Most of the reviews here center on this being good solely because it was a beginning of sorts for Francis Ford Coppola, well maybe I exaggerate slightly, but the film really should be seen as an entity un to itself. It really is quite good. The story centers on a disfunctional family in a large Irish castle that had tragedy befall them six years ago when the youngest daughter died by drowning, Since then the father has died and the mother has become obsessed with the death of her only daughter Kathleen, and she has her sons and herself attend a mock funeral every year as a kind of memorial. Thrown into the picture are a fortune-hunting daughter-in-law and a strange, cryptic doctor(wonderfully played by the very underrated Patrick Magee). The film has some great scenes and is very high on atmosphere. Despite being made on a shoestring budget(although actually filmed in Ireland and around a real Irish castle), the film transcends its limited resources and becomes a series of atmospheric shocks. The death scenes are well-directed, particularly the two involving Luana Anders. The score by Corman regular Ronald Stein is also first-rate. A great film to watch late at night.

Being a film buff, and not exclusively a fan of the horror genre, I saw the average rating on imdb and expected a kitchy, amateurish farce-of-a-flick. What it turned out to be caught me absolutely off-guard. The only thing more terrifying than the film itself was the poor overall rating it received on imdb. This is a superb example of a psychological thriller, and certainly the most underrated and underappreciated film of this genre I have ever seen.

Dementia 13 is a fairly simple narrative on the surface, but underneath it is an interweaving story, each branch adding depth and mystery to the story and each branch being a carefully-planned twist of the senses.

My wife, being a huge fan of the genre, especially of films from the 60s, has already encouraged me to watch numerous other films similar in narrative feel, such as "The Innocents" based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James or "The Haunting" based on the Shirley Jackson story. After seeing so many films, many of which were based on well-crafted stories by famous authors, it astounds me to think that A young Francis Coppola not only directed this superb film, but CONCEIVED it and WROTE it as well. The result reads just as well (and even better, in many cases) than many well-crafted novels, itself being a story of an utmost macabre and chilling nature... and the storytelling leaves little to be desired.

Francis Coppola, only 22 at the time, made this film with a miniscule budget of only $20,000 and an extremely rushed shooting schedule. It is no wonder Coppola blossomed into a well-respected, master craftsman of film. And the limited resources all but completely excuse any of the flaws in this film. Looking at the facts about the film and its maker surely must invoke jealously in any artist who realizes what true masters can accomplish at a young age.

Yes, it is true that Dementia 13 takes elements from Hitchcock's Psycho (among other Hitch films), including anticipatory tension, a finely dissonant score, and even several camera shots, but Coppola isn't just mimicking Hitchcock. He's manipulating the very essence of what makes Hitchcock frightening, while adding his own distinct style and flavor to the film.

And it IS genuinely frightening. It implies unspeakable things and it toys with one's mind as one watches it. And when the screen DOES show you something you've been anticipating, (partly in thanks to the demented film score,) expect to be surprised and expect your skin to tingle something fierce. The psychological angle with which Coppola approached Dementia 13 leaves one with the terrible sense that the human mind REALLY IS capable of this kind of demented horror... which, of course, makes the film all the more terrifying and satisfying.

This film is not merely an amateur's flailing attempt. It is the first masterpiece of a blooming genius.

The rating it has on imdb is appallingly low. I can't even begin to wonder what kinds of bad horror films are getting better ratings by people. Maybe more people just need to see this fairly obscure film before it will get its overdue appreciation. 9 out of 10

Back in the early 60s, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was taking his first steps as a director, and after directing two "Nudie Cuties" (his very first two works), he began working with legendary producer Roger Corman as an assistant in several tasks such as dialog director, actor and finally working in the sound department of Corman's 1963 film, "The Young Racers". It was while filming this movie in Ireland when Coppola finally convinced Corman to allow him to make his first "legitimate" film: "Dementia 13", a low-budget horror film using the same locations and most of the cast of Corman's movie. Impressed by the script that Coppola and writer Jack Hill devised, gave Coppola free reign over the film and went back to the America, leaving all set for the debut of a man who would become one of the most important directors of the 70s and 80s.

Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) has a problem, her husband John (Peter Read) has died and therefore legally she is unable to claim any inheritance if John's mother dies. In order to retain her part in the testament, Louise decides to make everyone believe that John is still alive and pretending he was sent to New york to work, making him unable to accompany her to the family annual Memorial service they do for John's younger sister Kathleen in Ireland. at her arrival, everything seems to work out fine at first, but John's older brother Richard (WIlliam Campbell) begins to suspect that something is wrong. However, soon this becomes Louise' lesser problem, as something bigger and morbid seems to be going on inside the dark corridors of Harlan's Castle.

"Dementia 13" was written mostly by Coppola in a few days, but after Corman allowed them to continue with the project, Jack Hill helped Coppola to finish the script. The story is basically a mixture of traditional Gothic horror with elements of the slasher sub-genre that was in its early stages during those years ("Dementia 13" shows a lot of influence from Hitchcock's "Psycho"), and while it is indeed a bit messy and contrived at first sight, it does deliver an interesting mystery and good doses of suspense. It's not the most original movie ever (not even for its time), but it's very noticeable that Coppola was not going for the easy route of showing shocks ("lots of sex and violence" as he supposedly promised to Corman) and actually attempts to built a thrilling story of intrigues and madness.

While the plot may not be the film greatest strength, the direction by Coppola is surprisingly very good for a debut as he shows a raw display of the talent that would take him to the top in the future years. Giving a great use to the Irish castle that serves as location to the film, Coppola creates a nice atmosphere of dread and well, dementia, that fills the film with ominous power and gives it a personality of its own. Despite his limited resources (even for Corman's standards), he manages to come up with some good (although sparse) special effects that look impressive when one considers the shoestring budget he had to work with. Of course, "Dementia 13" is not really a great or remarkable film, but it's very good for a first time director and it's also really obvious that this is where Coppola learned many things about his craft.

Overall the cast does an effective job and manage to carry the film without too many problems. Luana Anders as Louise Harlan was probably at the top of her gam