Coppola Original: Dementia 13

Welcome back to the blog, folks. Hope you enjoyed the Sneak Peek Review on Nemesis 5.

Looks like more than a few did. And by a few I mean over a thousand views there!!! but now it is time for the flick of the day. So a bit of digging as this was Coppola's first legitimate film, he had done a few sexploitation films prior to today's film.

Now this is not to put him in the same category as Jean Rollin or God help him, Jesus Franco but I just thought it was a funny notion that the man that brought us the Godfather did a couple of nudie flicks, The Bellboy and the Playgirls and Tonight for Sure. Yes plenty of T & A black and white so have at it. Today's film is a horror/thriller that could be considered a jump start into crazed axe murderer story lines and a precursor to Halloween and Black Christmas. This is Dementia 13.

Aww... he's holding her head while she pukes.

One night out in the moonlight for a row in the lake, John Haloran (Peter Read of Dementia 13, Freakshow, Johnny Shortwave, Talons of the Eagle and Rin Tin Tin: K9 Cop) is explaining to his captivating wife Louise (Luana Anders of The Pit and the Pendulum, Dementia 13, Easy Rider, Shampoo, The Missouri Breaks and Goin' South) that his mom is a bit kooky.

You see the will to the inheritance is a bit off. If John dies before his mother, Louise isn't seeing dime one. And with that bit of cryptic, the dude drops dead of a heart attack. Tragic irony or poetic justice? You be the judge. Louise quick on her feet, dumps John's body overboard and claims he is on a business trip. She goes so far is to type up a letter as she is off to the country to ingratiate herself to her mother-in-law in the will.

Not sure how long your dead husband can be out of town so at best she's got about a week, two max. No sooner Louise arrives at this castle (yeah, loaded), she witnesses Lady Haloran and son Billy (Bart Patton of Thriller, Tales of Wells Fargo, Checkmate, Zotz!,Petticoat Junction and The Farmer's Daughter) and Richard (William Campbell of Garrison's Gorillas, Star Trek, Bonanza, It Takes a Thief, Bracken's World, Ironside, The Rookies and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) engaging in some sort of ritual.

This isn't a romantic boat ride, John.

So Momma Haloran (Eithne Dunne of Omnibus, Playhouse 90, She Didn't Say No!, Shake Hands with the Devil and The Mutations) is how should we say, a bit different. A little off tilt, perhaps? Ah, the hell with it. She's crackers. She insists on the anniversary of her young daughter, Kathleen's death to visit the very pond she drown in as a child and tries to communicate with her.

Attempting to cash in on Lady Haloran's superstition as well as her fragile mental state, Louise hatches a scheme to con Lady Haloran that Kathleen is attempting to communicate beyond the grave. She sneaks out in the night with an armful of the dead child's toys playing them around the mass estate's pond as if they floated up under spooky circumstances. Louise is a bitch in case you missed that.

As this scheme is looking good, Louise accidentally swims next to Kathleen's somehow preserved body. I mean the kid looks pristine. Not sure if that is meant to be scarier or no one wanted to spring for a fake child sized skeleton.

Panicked, Louise surfaces and makes it to shore, only to be attacked with an ax by an unknown assailant who drags her body away in true Jason Vorhees style. Now that was creepy.

So...you are always that sudden or was that an off night?

Concerned for Lady Haloran's well-being, family doctor Caleb (Patrick Magee of Zulu, Lady Ice, The Last Days of Man on Earth, Luther, Simona, King Lear, Galileo and Barry Lyndon) is convinced that Louise's sudden disappearance is a mystery to be solved. He proceeds to hound the family in this Poirot fashion to almost an crazed manner.

Meanwhile a poacher snuck on the estate for some easy prey, becomes that of which he sought by the hand of the killer, or rather his ax.

Dr. Caleb convinced that one of the brothers is committing these murders even offers hypnosis as a means to see if on a subconscious level if one of them is the killer.

Is the Haloran family all bread baskets? Should someone alert the constables? How bad must John's body rotted in the lake?

So what we have here is a thriller/slasher film pre-dates any techno-colored or colored film from the 70s and 80s. With moody atmosphere, a good pace, this gorgeous estate as our background and a score providing the right tone to give off a Gothic horror. From a technical aspect, this whole film was shot in 9 days and from its tight editing, you would swear at least a month's work was in the can and not under two weeks.

Filmed in 35mm Spherical, sound in mono the angles of some of these shots, especially the night shots were very similar to Coppola's later Dracula film in style and presentation. Its normal runtime for the flick in 75 minutes but also there is an 80 minute version with a prologue.

Produced by the nose for talent and the master of frugal, Roger Corman also has a hand in adding additional scenes to ratchet up the tension. That in mind, Coppola and Corman argued over whether or not the film could be released in its current state and called in exploitation director Jack Hill (The Big Bird Cage, Black Momma White Momma, Coffy and Foxy Brown) to film those additional sequences.

With an estimated budget of $42,000, Coppola writes a screenplay considered by many harsher critics than I as a Psycho rip-off but I feel it has its own style with Gothic horror, brutal murders and keeps the audience guessing what is coming for you next.

Worst Sunday brunch ever.