Corman/Coppola horror film..."Dementia 13"

Wikipedia...

Dementia 13 (UK title: The Haunted and the Hunted) is a 1963 horror-thriller released by American International Pictures, starring William Campbell, Patrick Magee, and Luana Anders. The film was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Roger Corman. Although Coppola had been involved in at least two nudie films previously, Dementia 13 served as his first mainstream, "legitimate" directorial effort.

Plot

One night, while out row boating in the middle of a lake, John Haloran and his young wife Louise argue about his rich mother's will. Louise is upset that everything is currently designated to go to charity in the name of "a mysterious Kathleen." John tells Louise that if he dies before his mother does, she will be entitled to none of the inheritance. He then promptly drops dead from a massive heart attack. Thinking quickly, the scheming Louise throws the fresh corpse over the side of the boat, where he comes to rest at the bottom of the lake. Her plan is to pretend that he is still alive, in order to ingratiate her way back into the will. She types up a letter to Lady Haloran, inviting herself to the family's Irish castle while her husband is "away on business".

Upon arrival, she immediately notices that things are a little strange in the castle. She observes John's two brothers, Billy and Richard taking part in a bizarre ceremony with their mother as part of a yearly ritualistic tribute to their youngest sister, Kathleen, who died many years before in a freak drowning accident. Lady Haloran still mourns for her, and during this year's ceremony, she faints dead away. As Louise helps her into the house, her mother-in-law tells her that she fainted because one of the flowers she had thrown had died as it touched Kathleen's grave.

Louise, realizing that Lady Haloran is emotionally overwrought and superstitious, devises a plan intended to convince the old woman that Kathleen is trying to communicate with her from beyond the grave. This plan involves stealing some of the dead girl's old toys and placing them at the bottom of the estate's pond where they will float to the surface in the middle of the day in an ostensibly ghostly way. At night, Louise swims into the pond and begins placing the toys as planned. However, she is shocked to see what appears to be Kathleen's perfectly preserved corpse at the bottom of the pond. Horrified, she swims to the surface... and is abruptly axed to death by an unknown assailant. The killer then drags Louise's bloody corpse away.

Concerned family doctor Justin Caleb arrives and becomes determined to solve the mystery. He questions the family in an intense, almost insane manner. Meanwhile, the murderer strikes again, decapitating a man who is poaching on the estate. Caleb has the pond drained, revealing a stone shrine for Kathleen, with the words "Forgive Me, Kathleen" on the monument. The following night, Lady Haloran is attacked by a shadowy figure, but she survives.

Finally, Caleb utilizes an obscure nursery rhyme ("Little fishies in a brook, papa's hanged you on a hook") to help him discover Louise's corpse hidden in a meat freezer. Next to the body is a wax figure of Kathleen. Caleb places the figure in a public square to lure the killer. Taking the bait, a gibbering Billy attempts to kill Richard's fiancée Kane with an axe; he has become insane with the guilt he has felt for years over having caused the death of his sister Kathleen. Caleb removes a gun from his coat pocket and shoots Billy to death.

IMDb reviewer, José Luis Rivera Mendoza, wrote...

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 game and really shows that she is more than a pretty face. William Campbell as Richard Haloran is also excellent in his performance, although a little over the top at times. The film's best performances are given by Eithne Dunne and Patrick Magee, who as the unstable Lady Haloran and her Doctor respectively, give the film a dignity and a class uncommon in other similar movies. Magee is easily the highlight of the film, as he transforms what otherwise would be a two-dimensional character into a full fledged character with his charm and enormous talent.

This movie is a quite good example of how the cinema was evolving in the 60s, as the style and overall tone feel very fresh and young; however, those expecting to see another of Coppola's masterpieces in "Dementia 13" will be sorely disappointed. The movie's biggest problem is the somewhat messy script, that not only feels a bit too derivative from "Psycho" in some moments, but it also can become confusing and tedious at times. Fortunately, the cast does a very good job (considering the limitations) in solving this and along with Coppola's original direction literally save the movie from being a failure.

"Dementia 13" has gained a good reputation over the years, and while most of it is probably due to Coppola's later success as a director, it's hard to deny that there is real raw talent in the making of the film. Personally, I think that the best way to appreciate this early Coppola movie is to go without expectations and be willing to enjoy the ride. A very good, albeit flawed, horror movie.

Dementia 13

1963

 
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Francis Ford Coppola’s vision

Another novelty like 3D...doomed.

"Coppola’s Vision for Twixt: Director as DJ"

by

Lewis Wallace

July 23rd, 2011

Wired

Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s unlikely vision for the future of cinema would turn directors into DJs, touring with their movies and “performing” unique versions for audiences.

“Why do movies have to be canned?” Coppola asked the crowd Saturday during the Comic-Con International panel for his upcoming gothic horror movie, Twixt. “I mean, everything else is…. Cable news is entertainment. If it’s not canned, it’s certainly predigested. Politics is entertainment, and it’s predigested. Everything. All we have that’s vaguely alive are the concerts you go to, some theater or sports.”

Coppola turned members of the Hall H crowd into test subjects for his wild idea to turn movies into live entertainment. Accompanied onstage by musician Dan Deacon and actor Val Kilmer, Coppola used a touchpad to select scenes from Twixt on the fly as Deacon tweaked the soundtrack.

Coppola said Twixt was conceived as a way to inject a live feel into cinema.

“What I’d love to do is go on tour,” he said, “like a month before the film opened, and go to all the cities myself, with my collaborators, with live music and actually perform the film for each audience uniquely for them — a different version for each audience. That’s what opera was like.”

Twixt centers on a horror writer who stumbles onto strange goings-on, and maybe vampires, in a small town. During one segment screened Saturday, the writer, played by Val Kilmer, brainstorms alone in his hotel room. Coppola and his tech crew spliced together different mixes of the montage, during which Kilmer assumed various personas.

“Theoretically, I could push the Shuffle button,” Coppola said.

At another point, the director replaced Tom Waits’ voiceover with his own live narration. There were plenty of glitches and false starts during the presentation, but Coppola’s “dress rehearsal” drew enthusiastic applause from a Hall H crowd obviously intrigued by the concept.

“It has some kinks,” said Deacon, “but we’ll work it out.”

Twixt’s interactive cinema is just the latest creative impulse from a director who’s been a lifelong fan of innovation. The director of Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy said he’s always had a soft spot in his heart for 3-D cinema, but doesn’t like wearing special glasses to watch a movie.

“I always loved 3-D,” said the 72-year-old director. “I mean, my attic in Point Lookout when I was 13 was littered with red and green gel, and motors, as I was trying to invent the spinning disc that would enable glasses not to be necessary,” he said.

Remembering films like Bwana Devil, House of Wax and Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, he said the rise of computer animation and digital television might be enough to keep 3-D trend alive this time.

“Although for me — and this is just a personal opinion — I don’t like watching 3-D with glasses,” he said. “I enjoyed very much Avatar, but I confess that I took the glasses off during much of the movie. And whenever I saw the images start to show that it was going to be 3-D, I put them on and saw a wonderful sequence, and then I took them off again.”

For that reason, Coppola shot only key sequences of Twixt in 3-D. During the Comic-Con screening, viewers lifted paper masks shaped like Edgar Allen Poe’s head — with polarized film where the eyes would be — to their faces. On-screen cues instructed audience members to hold up the masks before certain scenes, including a segment that showed whirring gears in a creepy bell tower.

Throughout the panel, Coppola came off as a kind of cross between a film historian and a Ham radio afficionado tinkering in his basement. He waxed nostalgic about Napoléon, a 1927 French film shown in Polyvision, with key scenes projected on three screens, before looking to the future.

“Cinema has some real surprises up its sleeve,” and will continue to evolve just as theater did before it, Coppola said.

“Movies are so young,” he said. “I mean, barely a hundred years old. How dare anyone think that all [cinema's] got up its sleeve is some more 3-D…. Cinema has many more surprises that you and your children will invent, because it’s at the beginning of this expression of image and sound, in many ways. Music and theater are thousands of years old. Cinema’s a baby.”

Two from colleague...Corman/Coppola and Romero

Luana Anders

Dimentia 13

Francis Ford Coppola

1963

Judith O'Dea

Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero

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