Horror Classic 49 of 50: DEMENTIA 13
Countdown update: If you can do basic math, you may have already guessed that after his, I only have 1 movie left to go!
Hmm. So maybe it's not such a catchy title. Certainly it's not as catchy as Dementia 13, the title of this week's movie. It was released in 1963, produced by Roger Corman, and it's more or less the directing debut of Francis Ford Coppola, who would later go on to direct such masterpieces as The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2, and Captain E-O. And no, it is not the sequel to Dementias 1 through 12.
Married couple John and Louise are out in a boat, surrounded by darkness. Why would you go for a boat ride at night? Don't they fear the Creature from the Haunted Sea? Well, it's not that kind of movie, so instead of getting eaten, they argue. It's the night before John's family reuinion, and Louise thinks it's ridiculous that John's sickly old mother still has Kathleen in her will. It's impossible to know whether she's right or not, because we have no idea who Kathleen is yet. Is she a budgie? If so, I'm gonna have to side with Louise on this one.
Long story short, John has a heart attack and Louise drops him in the lake. Then she forges a letter from John to his mom (including a spacing typo!), in which the fake John says, "Hey, I'm sorry I couldn't make it on time, but Louise is coming, so be nice to her, and I'll be there later." Then she goes to Castle Haloran in Ireland, where John's family is gathering for a rather morbid purpose.
It's the anniversary of the death of Kathleen, and just as they do every year, the Halorans are having a memorial service for her. Kathleen died when she was a little girl -- she went missing overnight and was found drowned in the pond in the morning -- and poor old Mother has never gotten over it. Also present at this spooky kooky castle are John's brothers Billy and Richard, and Richard's bride-to-be Kane, who Mother disapproves of.
"Kane"? Is that a name? Do you suppose Richard ever affectionately calls her "Kane, Sugar"?
So the castle's big and eerie, and everyone stares at each other a lot, but nobody seems to catch on to Louise's foul play. Her plan, you see, is to endear herself to Mrs. Haloran, then convince the old lady that Kathleen is speaking to her from beyond the grave and wants her to put Louise in her will. Hmm... How much sense does that make? Kathleen's going to project herself from the afterlife just to say, "Hey, Mom! You know that lady that my brother married, whom I never met? You should really leave her all your money! Really!"
But Mrs. Haloran has so few noodles left in her mental soup that it just might work. So after the memorial, Louise steals a few of Kathleen's old dolls and begins a complicated plan to moor them to the bottom of the pond so Mrs. Haloran will perceive it as a sign. This plan, naturally, requires Louise to strip down to her underwear. I can assure you, it's absolutely necessary to the hott. I mean, to the plot.
Guess what Louise sees at the bottom of the pond. A rubber tire? No! A boot? No! Judge Crater (look it up)? No! It's a small shrine to Kathleen, complete with a little monument that says FORGIVE ME KATHLEEN. What the hey? Who put that thing there? Does somebody in the family know more about the girl's death then they're letting on?
You might expect that the rest of the film would be about Louise finding more clues and working her way through that mystery... but you'd be proven wrong as soon as she surfaces from the pond and is immediately ATTACKED BY A SHADOWY FIGURE WITH AN AXE, WHO HACKS HER UP AND DISPOSES OF THE BODY! Wow. I didn't see that coming. Clearly somebody is determined to hide the truth.
Now what? Well, now there's still the family doctor, who has some suspicions of his own. With Mrs. Haloran distracted by her favorite dead daughter, Billy being kind of a wuss, and Richard and Kane busy with their stupid ol' wedding plans, it'll be up to Dr. Detective to figure things out. Before the movie ends, there's another axe murder, a creepy human-size wax doll, and a couple of fake-sounding Irish accents.
Is It Scary?
I have to admit, that first murder really startled me. As you might guess, this film was made after Psycho, so it's pretty obvious Coppola was influenced by that other movie about an attractive blonde who schemes to dishonestly take a large sum of money, shows us her underwear, then dies halfway through the film.Is It Scary?
Lessons I Learned
- Don't go swimming in your underwear in the middle of the night in a pond where your husband's little sister died. I guess most people would never even have that opportunity, but you can't be too careful.
- Putting two blonde women with similar hairstyles in the same movie can be confusing. (I spent about 15 minutes thinking Louise and Kane were the same person.)
- Kane, to Richard: "You know, sometimes I think you see me as a Christmas tree ornament!"
Four.
Comments
• I wasn't sure what to expect from this. Sure, Coppola's made some good movies, but this was his first real film and it was made with the frugal B-movie producer Roger Corman. It was a passable thriller... It seems like the kind of thing that would be remade.
• My roommate's girlfriend Katie was around for this one. I asked for her assessment when the movie was over, and she said, "The first half was good. I sorta fell asleep after that. It looked a lot like the inside of my eyelids."
• So why "Dementia 13"? The number 13 never enters into it. According to the Wikipedia article, they were just going to call it Dementia, but there had already been a film by that name. Also according to that article, there was an extra scene at the beginning of the theatrical print, in which a "doctor" administered the "D-13 test" to determine whether the moviegoers could handle what they were about to see.
• I want to point out that I watched this movie during the first half of the Super Bowl. Football game? What football game?
• I don't want to spoil too much, but that wax doll I mentioned earlier? Totally creepy.
Letter grade for Dementia 13: C
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues. The last of the horror classics! Will it be within the realm of watchability like the last disc and a half's worth of movies, or will it be another complete stinker? I can't wait to find out.
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