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Dis­cov­er Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Psy­cho-inspired direc­to­r­i­al debut

15 Nov 2021

Words by Anton Bitel

A close-up black and white portrait of a woman with blonde hair behind an ornate metal grill.
A close-up black and white portrait of a woman with blonde hair behind an ornate metal grill.
The Roger Cor­man-pro­duced Demen­tia 13 is much more than a quick­ie Hitch­cock ripoff, as this Director’s Cut proves.

Demen­tia 13 begins with a drown­ing. Invit­ed to go to bed by his pret­ty blonde wife Louise (Lua­na Anders), John (Peter Read) prefers instead to take his row­boat out alone on the lake at night, with only his tran­sis­tor radio for com­pa­ny. But Louise insists on join­ing him. John sees through his wife – sees that she has mar­ried him only for a share in the Halo­ran fam­i­ly for­tune, and sus­pects that she would kill him once she has got her hands on his inheritance.

Sure enough, the gold-dig­ging Louise has come along only to per­suade John to peti­tion his moth­er to change her will. For crazy’ Lady Halo­ran (Ethne Dunne) has left all her mon­ey to char­i­ty in the name of this mys­te­ri­ous Kath­leen”. Yet as this brit­tle pair bick­er (with Bud­dy and the Fads’ rock­a­bil­ly track He’s Caught’ track play­ing on the radio), John has a heart attack. Although Louise at first tries to help him, once she sees that he has died she sets a new scheme in motion, dump­ing his body in the lake.

That might not sound like a drown­ing – after all, John is already dead before he hits the water – but his fate is an uncan­ny echo of anoth­er inci­dent from sev­en years ear­li­er, in which Lady Halo­rans’ young daugh­ter Kath­leen had drowned in a large pond on the prop­er­ty of the Halo­rans’ Irish estate. Indeed, no soon­er have we seen John and the still play­ing radio sink into the murky lake than the semi-ani­mat­ed open­ing cred­its show an obvi­ous­ly female fig­ure under­wa­ter, draw­ing an explic­it if irra­tional par­al­lel between the two incidents.

Kathleen’s death haunts the Halo­rans. Her younger broth­er Bil­ly (Bart Pat­ton), now a young adult, still has night­mares, while his old­er broth­er Richard (William Camp­bell), a sculp­tor like his late father, immers­es him­self in his work and strug­gles to give his vis­it­ing Amer­i­can fiancée Kane (Mary Mitchel) the atten­tion that she deserves. And Lady Halo­ran, though sharp as a tack, has nev­er got over her daughter’s pre­ma­ture pass­ing, and when the fam­i­ly reassem­bles every year at Cas­tle Halo­ran for a com­mem­o­ra­tive cer­e­mo­ny, she always ends up fainting.

Kathleen’s drown­ing has sent rip­ples through time – and in her manip­u­la­tive lega­cy hunt­ing, Louise will have to con­tend not only with the psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly fraught ten­sions with­in this strange and dam­aged fam­i­ly, but also with the ghost­ly pres­ence of Kath­leen her­self, whose images are all over the prop­er­ty. There is also some­one else lurk­ing the grounds, armed with an axe and unafraid to kill.

Close-up portrait of a woman with blonde, wavy hair and a serious expression.

Every­one begins some­where. In the ear­ly 60s, young UCLA Film School stu­dent Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la had made a few shorts, re-edit­ed sev­er­al skin flicks for the cash, and had also worked in var­i­ous pro­duc­tion roles with B‑movie mae­stro Roger Cor­man. When Cor­man fin­ished pro­duc­tion on The Young Rac­ers in Ire­land and had a small amount of bud­get left over, he offered this remain­der to his sound man Cop­po­la, with strict instruc­tions to make a quick­ie Psy­cho ripoff.

Cop­po­la seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty, shoot­ing for nine days in Ire­land, and bring­ing over from The Young Rac­ers actors Camp­bell, Anders and Patrick Magee (bril­liant as the Halo­rans’ eccen­tric if astute fam­i­ly doc­tor Justin Caleb). The result was the fea­ture debut of Fran­cis Cop­po­la’ as writer/​director. The influ­ence of Hitchcock’s ur-slash­er is clear, from the crisp mono­chrome pre­sen­ta­tion, to the crim­i­nal­ly com­pro­mised would-be hero­ine sud­den­ly and vio­lent­ly killed off at the halfway point, to the pres­ence of not one but three adult mama’s boys caught under the influ­ence of their dom­i­nant mother.

Yet there are also some key dif­fer­ences. Not just the super­fi­cial change of the mur­der weapon from knife to axe, or of the loca­tion from Ari­zona to Ire­land, but also a far deep­er com­mit­ment to goth­ic ele­ments and atmos­phere. And there is nobody, in either Psy­cho or any oth­er film for that mat­ter, quite like Dr Justin Caleb – a wise old ama­teur sleuth all too aware of his own repel­lent char­ac­ter. Mod­ern view­ers, raised on decades of gial­li and slash­ers, will have lit­tle trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing the shad­owy fig­ure who­dun­nit. But there is still real plea­sure to be had in wan­der­ing these halls of repressed mad­ness, where every­one seems affect­ed in one way or anoth­er by the tragedy of Kathleen.

Cor­man dis­ap­proved of Coppola’s fin­ished film, want­i­ng some­thing longer, with more kills and more voiceover work. So against Coppola’s will he hired Jack Hill (yes, the Jack Hill) to shoot an addi­tion­al axe mur­der, and Monte Hell­man (yes, the Monte Hell­man) to film a gim­micky pro­logue in which a psy­chi­a­trist faces the cam­era and tests the audi­ence on whether they are men­tal­ly ready to watch Demen­tia 13. For­tu­nate­ly, all these unnec­es­sary, extra­ne­ous mate­ri­als have been lopped off for this lean­er Director’s Cut, which begins, as it should, with Coppola’s cold, dark open on the lake, where a fam­i­ly his­to­ry repeats itself.

Demen­tia 13 is on Blu-ray 15 Novem­ber from Lion­s­gate UK

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