75 Minutes, Black & White, USA, 1963

Written By: Francis Ford Coppola & Jack Hill

Directed By: Francis Ford Coppola

Dramatis Personae:

William Campbell is Richard Haloran, brooding artist and eldest male of the Haloran clan – and by default the only level-headed member of the otherwise twisted family.

Luana Anders is Louise, Richard’s sister-in-law and the requisite conniving blonde.

Bart Patton is Billy Haloran, youngest living Haloran and the most unstable; anyone who looks that much like Johnny Depp is bound to have issues.

Mary Mitchell is Kane, Richard’s fiancé and perhaps the only normal, decent person in his life.

Eithne Dunne is Lady Haloran, frigid and deranged matriarch of the Haloran clan, and the source of the issues her sons all have with women.

Patrick Magee is Caleb, Haloran family doctor and smug bastard.

Ron Perry is Arthur, groundskeeper at the Haloran estate.

Karl Schanzer is Simon, comic relief poacher on Haloran lands.

Peter Read is John Haloran, middle child of the Haloran clan and Louise’s husband. Don’t get too attached to him…

Commentary:

I do not worship at the altar of Roger Corman. I think that gets far more praise as a filmmaker than he actually deserves. Granted, no one would ever accuse him of aspiring to High Art; Corman’s films were made fast and cheap, looking to cash in on whatever trend was going around. His is not the work of an artiste; his is the work of a shrewd businessman looking to make a quick buck. It’s only by sheer accident that any of his movies turned out to be any GOOD. Or maybe not entirely by accident. Whatever his shortcomings as a director, Corman’s greatest strength has always been administrative: he manages to surround himself with talented people that make him look good by extension. It’s no secret that many of the actors and assistant directors Corman worked with went on to MUCH better things. Actors like Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Robert DeNiro. Directors like Ron Howard, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese…and Francis Ford Coppola, director of Dementia 13.

The origins of Dementia 13 are so distinctly Cormanesque that it’s not even funny: Corman had finished filming The Young Racers ahead of schedule. Not one to waste a thing, Corman realized that he still had a location and a group of actors at his disposal, so he handed them over to Coppola – his sound tech on Young Racers – and commissioned him to make a little low-budget psychological thriller, something in the vein of Psycho, only bloodier and cheaper. Dementia 13 was the result. Even though it’s Coppola’s first film, it stands as a prominent landmark on a grand road. Although it’s not without flaws, the film is an unsettling piece of gothic, gory family drama, that rises above its low budget and secondhand sets on many occasions.

Dementia 13 opens with a rather minimalist sequence: John Haloran, accompanied by his wife Louise and his transistor radio, strolls down to the lakeside of his family’s Ireland estate, and hops in a rowboat. He’s had a rough day, and wants to take a nighttime cruise to clear his head. But Louise will not leave him be: John’s mother has just read her Will and Testament, and declared that the Haloran family fortune will be donated to charity in the name of “Kathleen,” whoever that is. The avaricious Louise presses her husband to speak to his mother and try to get her to change the Will. Unfortunately, the argument combined with the exertion of rowing proves to be too much for John’s weak heart, and he expires before they can get back to land.

Being a conniving blonde in a gothic thriller, Louise immediately realizes that without John she’s not going to see a penny of the Haloran money, so she concocts a plan. She dumps John’s body in the lake (along with his radio, which has been playing a piece of upbeat rockabilly music throughout the whole scene; a great piece of cinematic juxtaposition), and forges a letter from him saying he was suddenly called back to New York for business. This, she concludes, will buy her some time to convince the old bat to change the Will, and no one will be the wiser.

The next morning at the Haloran estate, Louise and young Billy Haloran talk about Kathleen. Kathleen was their baby sister. The child of Lady Haloran’s middle age, Kathleen was doted upon and much beloved…until her accidental drowning in the estate’s pond seven years ago. Since then, Lady Haloran has been withdrawn and cold, and on the anniversary of Kathleen’s death she forces her sons to return to the estate and participate in a morbid little memorial ceremony.

Later that day, Richard’s fiancé Kane arrives from America, which raises the spirits of everyone around the place. Particularly those of Richard, who is straining hard to get away from his mother’s domineering influence and make a new life for himself. Billy is also taken with Kane – or at least the brightness she brings to the dreary old family home – but he’s already so squarely under his mother’s thumb that nothing ever comes of it.

Lady Haloran and her two surviving sons perform the memorial ceremony, which involves placing flowers on Kathleen’s grave. Lady Haloran is so distraught that she imagines seeing one of the flowers dying as she places it on the grave, and she collapses. After getting Lady Haloran to bed and sending for Doctor Caleb, Louise sees her opportunity. While attending the matriarch, Louise tells her that she has heard the ghost of Kathleen roaming the halls of the castle, and says that she will leave a sign for her mother. In her distraught state, Lady Haloran of course buys the whole thing. That done, Louise sets about arranging the sign: she sneaks into Kathleen’s room, grabs some distinctive dolls, and carries them down to the pond where Kathleen drowned. Her intention is to tie them to a weight and sink them to the bottom, and use a slow-acting acid to dissolve the twine that binds them, thus ensuring the dolls will bob to the surface later in a convincingly supernatural manner. Louise strips down and hops into the pond…and here is where the film takes a sharp left turn.

For all is not peaceful beneath the surface of the pond. At the bottom of the pond is a stone shrine…and what seems to be the body of Kathleen Haloran. Startled, Louise makes a beeline for the surface, and is immediately set upon by a shadowy personage wielding an axe. Louise is promptly hacked up and then dragged away.

The next day, Doctor Caleb pronounces Lady Haloran in good health physically, but advises rest and no more morbid flights of fancy. The Haloran clan gathers for lunch on the lawn – although Louise is nowhere to be found, much to Lady Haloran’s dismay. As they watch, the dolls Louise planted suddenly float up to the surface. The event is met with angry skepticism on the part of Richard, but it manages to completely unhinge Lady Haloran, who heads back to the house to fetch Kathleen’s favorite tiara.

Later, a local hunter named Simon is busy poaching on the Haloran property, when he suddenly stumbles upon the body of Kathleen that was previously at the bottom of the pond. He is then subsequently beheaded for his trouble by the same shadowy figure who did in Louise. Meanwhile, Doctor Caleb is getting fed up with this nonsense and directs the groundskeeper Arthur to drain the artificial pond. And Lady Haloran sneaks out to Kathleen’s old playhouse, where she encounters both the body of Kathleen and the axe-wielding maniac, who demolishes the playhouse around her. Lady Haloran just barely manages to escape, and collapses into a catatonic state.

The next morning, the pond has been drained, and Caleb, Richard, and Billy are confronted with what lies at the bottom: a stone shrine, carved with the words “Forgive Me Kathleen.” Caleb declares that the shrine has been underwater for several years…and as the sons of a noted sculptor, both Billy and Richard had the ability to carve it and place it there. This veiled accusation is the last straw for Richard, who never liked Caleb anyway, and he refuses to cooperate further with this impromptu investigation. This only causes Caleb to redouble his efforts to solve the mystery plaguing this family.

Dementia 13 is widely hailed as a cult classic, and its reputation is well deserved. This film is very much a diamond in the rough, dark and gothic and just plain WEIRD at times. Glimmers abound of Francis Ford Coppola’s later talent, as his first ever film lays out some of what would eventually become his favorite themes. The complicated bonds of love and hatred between the members of a crumbling aristocratic family. The suppression of rage, guilt, and angst, until they fester into mental illness and violence. The power of symbols and graven images, especially to those desperate to find hidden meanings. It’s a surprisingly good first effort, especially given the budget and time constraints involved.

Of course, it’s not exactly a masterpiece. As a first effort, Dementia 13 is simply that. A first effort. Despite the flashes of genius that pointed toward a potential master director, Coppola’s ambition obviously overreached his capacity. His script is unnecessarily complicated, chock full of red herrings and character revelations that ultimately lead nowhere. When the movie reaches its climax, and the killer’s identity and motivations are laid bare, one feels a bit cheated. Wait, that was it? That was the big secret? It seemed too easy; after setting up such an atmosphere of gothic weirdness, to simply thrust us back into banal reality was a disappointment. In addition, a side-effect of trying to make the whodunit more difficult for the audience to solve was that we have very few likeable characters in the piece. Doctor Caleb in particular is a right bastard of a man, strutting around the Haloran estate like he owns the place and smugly interrogating anyone he deems necessary to solve the mystery (it doesn’t help that Patrick Magee chews the scenery with Shatner-esque enthusiasm, making Caleb seem even more pompous). We don’t blame Richard for despising the man, but Richard is so withdrawn and brooding that he’s not much easier to identify with. “Unlikable” does not equal “complex,” and it’s often due to poor screenwriting that the two become synonymous.

Coppola need not shoulder all the blame, however. It’s also common knowledge that Corman took the film away from Coppola in post-production – Corman felt the film wasn’t exploitative enough, apparently – and brought in Jack Hill to shoot some extra scenes and re-dub some dialogue. This is why we have comic-relief poacher Simon (and his fake Irish brogue) making with the painfully unfunny banter and ultimately getting done in (this might explain why no one found Simon’s head when they drained the pond…). This is also why Dementia 13 as a whole has a strange disjointed feel. Scenes just don’t seem to flow together right; the sequence of some events is unclear. Simple things like the time of day – or even which day at all – aren’t easy to determine. It’s possible this might be somewhat intentional – this is a movie about madness, after all – but it’s also just as possible that it’s the result of the work of two different directors with different storytelling goals being artlessly crammed together.

Nevetheless, Dementia 13 is that rare bird: the Roger Corman-produced movie that’s actually GOOD. It rises above the cheap Psycho knockoff that Corman originally envisioned, and it even survived Corman’s active attempts to ruin it. That’s the mark of a good director, I think – or at least, a director destined to be great.

Things To Look For:

- This movie was filmed in Ireland (as was The Young Riders, of course), but I find it consistently odd that none of our main characters have anything approaching an authentic Irish accent. Lady Haloran and Caleb come close, and Arthur the groundskeeper has a pretty good approximation, but all of the Haloran boys have distinctly American accents. Of course this can be justified; both Richard and John have American wives, John works in New York City, and Caleb makes reference to Billy’s “American education.” So it seems to be implied that the boys left the homeland to seek their fortune in America. Makes sense, and it is a cost-effective and believable way to get away with using American actors. After all, it was not so long ago that Ireland had little to offer its native sons. That there were simply no jobs in the country, and the only way to get anywhere was to emigrate. It’s perhaps an ironic statement that in the movie’s credits they thank Aer Lingus Airlines and Guiness Brewery. For the longest time, the only Irish businesses of note: tourism and alcohol.

- Victoriana scares the crap out of me on general principle, but in particular when you consider the children’s toys. I direct your attention to the scene in Kathleen’s room. Some of the most scary-ass dolls and wind-up toys you are ever going to see are on display, including…::shudder::…a cymbal-playing monkey. Gah. Who was making these things? And were kids expected to actually like playing with them? God, no wonder our parents were so messed up.

- You watch enough of this old thrillers and horror films, and you notice patterns, and you start to glean life lessons. The one I’ve learned is, if you’re independently wealthy, never marry a blonde. They WILL connive for your money and arrange convenient accidents for you. And they’ve probably got Vitalis-soaked lovers on the side. I’m just glad that I’m not all that wealthy, and my girlfriend went back to being a brunette. At least brunettes are slow burns…

- Billy Haloran is played by someone calling himself “Bart Patton,” but I suspect otherwise. I’ve long suspected that Johnny Depp is some kind of immortal. Whether some variety of Undead, or perhaps just someone who has made a deal with the Devil for eternal youth or some such thing. He’s allegedly pushing 45, and he still looks 25. And since we know he can’t chalk it up to clean living, there’s got to be something else at work here. And maybe he’s older than we all think! Maybe he fakes his death every 30 years or so and assumes a new identity so we never suspect!

Think I’m crazy? Well, judge for yourself:

Bart Johnny

I think I’ve made my point, don’t you?

Written words (c) 2007-2010 Tim o'Brien. Not to be used without permission. Other content, including images, is intended as a Fair Use pursuant to 17 U.S.C. sec. 107.

Date Posted: October 30^th, 2007

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