Tweet
Released by: Film Chest
Released on: 4/26/2011
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Francis Ford Coppola based of a script he co-wrote with second unit director Jack Hill, 1963's Dementia 13 isn't a masterpiece of terror but it is an interesting precursor for things to come and is widely and rightfully acknowledged as the film where Coppola started to find his style.
When the film begins in Ireland, a blonde named Louise (Luana Anders) is in a boat with her husband, John Haloran, when he has a heart attack. Rather than report this, she decides to toss his body into the lake and write a fake not with his forged signature on it to make it look like he's gone on a business trip. Why? Because if John is dead, Louise isn't going to get any of the inheritance her husband would have raked in when the aging Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn) dies.
Louise, on her own, makes the trip to the Castle Haloran in order to get in good with the family and in turn insure that she gets her cut of the family fortune, but once she gets there strange things start happening. Seven years prior to all of this, John's younger sister, Kathleen, drowned in the pond on the estate, a fact that haunts Lady Haloran to this day and which is a source of great grief to the family and which is the reason John and Louise were to head there in the first place - for her annual memorial service. Louise daftly figures out how to exploit this but soon finds that there's more to Kathleen's death and to the Haloran family history than she first thought and soon John's older brother Richard (WIlliam Campbell) begins to get suspicious of his sister-in-law's actions.
Set to a great score from Ronald Stein that is, like so much of the film, a little reminiscent of work done previously on Hitchcock's seminal Psycho (this film was intended as a quick cash in on that picture's success), Dementia 13 is an interesting movie more so than a good movie. Made while Coppola was assisting Corman in Ireland on the set of The Young Racers, this film basically recycles the sets and cast used for that picture made the same year and, since Corman was impressed enough with the script, Coppola was essentially given free reign for the first time in his career. The results are a mixed bag - we get some absolutely awesome shots throughout the film, some taken from the sort of oddball angles that his later films would start to be known for, and some rather exciting moments of suspense, only to have much of this hampered by periodically confusing script quirks and what was obviously a microscopic budget.
The cast are all decent enough in their parts but it's the set pieces and camerawork that you'll remember here and not the performances. Eerie shots of children's toys and some bizarre underwater photography help the picture stand out while the last fifteen minutes or so really ratchet up the pace to deliver quite a satisfying and grisly finale.
Video/Audio/Extras:
HD Cinema Classics/Cultra presents Dementia 13 on Blu-ray in a 1.78.1 widescreen aspect ratio in black and white, as it should be, an AVC encoded 1080p transfer taken from existing 35mm elements. While certain scenes offer improved detail, some appear to have been scrubbed of their grain resulting in softness and waxiness in certain scenes and the noise reduction is fairly obvious in certain scenes. Black levels look good and there are no problems with compression artifacts to complain about. Contrast is all over the place, but the movie has always had that problem and many of the scenes that look blown out and soft on this Blu-ray look that way in every other version of the movie as well. This is an improvement over the various DVD versions floating around, but you can't quite expect a reference quality transfer this time around as this older low budget picture is never going to look perfect.
Audio options are provided in English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and 2.0 Mono with optional subtitles available in Spanish. No lossless audio option is provided, but the tracks that are here sound fine, if unremarkable. Dialogue is reasonably clear and basically problem free, just expect things to lean heavily towards the flat side.
Extras are light but there's a trailer and a quick, two minute restoration demo included on the disc, both in high definition. The package also includes a DVD of the film with the same extras and a postcard insert inside the keepcase.
The Final Word:
If this isn't the most mind blowing restoration you'll ever see, it is an improvement over the various DVD releases making the rounds, even if it is a bit too heavy on the noise reduction. As far as the film itself goes, it takes a while to get going but once it does it's got some fun twists and it all leads up to a pretty solid finish.
Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!
