Dementia 13 (1963)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Purely Joyful Movie!

Better Late Then Never

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Only for Francis Ford Coppola fans. Not a great movie. Francis Ford Coppola's 5th movie as director, and he clearly had not reached anywhere near the heights of his craft yet. The fact that the movie is produced by Roger Corman, the king of B-grade schlock/horror gives more away than the fact that Coppola is writer/director.Plot is weak and haphazard and the pacing is uneven. Cinematography is quite bad. Shooting in black-and-white might be the ideal way to film a crime-thriller, but any advantage in mood is entirely negated by the poor picture, especially texture, quality.Audio quality is appalling. There is a constant hum during the entire movie. Not often one even notices audio quality, and this was particularly irritating.Performances are mostly decent. A few over-actors but nothing too bad.On the plus side, there is a decent feeling of suspense and "whodunnit?". Coppola manages to sustain an air of mystery about the characters, despite the uneven pacing.Only worth watching if, like me, you're a Francis Ford Coppola fan and feel compelled to watch all his movies.

A shoestring-budget horror flick from a very young Francis Ford Coppola, DEMENTIA 13 (1963) is actually a very effective chiller. The writing is lacking and the cast is largely unknown, but there's some eerie atmospheric stuff and some nice shocks. The mysterious axe murderer is handled well, playing up the suspense, and the black & white cinematography really suits the grisly shots. The plot (involving a troubled family, a dead sister, a will, a scheming wife, a pond...) is a bit difficult to follow, particularly when characters have similar "looks". It all dovetails into a psycho-killer whodunnit.DEMENTIA 13 is no film masterpiece, but it's unnerving on a dark and stormy night.

I never heard of this movie before, it was in my box I bought at wal mart bout a year ago,, yea finally sitting down to watch em all i'm at like number 50 out of 100. so this movie was pretty darn good, I love the plot line, from the very beginning scene till the end you really don't have a clue who done it,, you know why but not who, obviously it's for the money of course, where's there's a will there's relatives,, I just loved the opening scene , where the wife throws her husband off of the boat after he has a heart attack, he conveniently leaves his pill bottle empty has a heart attack, so you know what the manipulative money grubber woman does,, throws her poor hubby overboard,, goes back to the hotel room and types a note to mother from her dearly departed husband,, now that's conniving and creepy.

Dementia 13 (AKA: The Haunted/The Hunted) is written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars William Campbell, Luana Anders, Patrick Magee and Bart Patton. Music is by Ronald Stein and cinematography by Charles Hannawalt.A Roger Corman produced cheapie, made to give Coppola a leg up the ladder while utilising sets and cast members just used for Corman's The Young Racers, Dementia 13 has somehow gained a reputation as a cult classic. It isn't.Coppola shows some nice touches at times, throwing in some eerie images (children's toys/underwater shenanigans) to a Gothic castle backdrop, and he is assured when it comes to a violent scene, but the script is laughable, the screenplay ludicrous and away from Magee the acting is weak. Add to that that the mystery element - the who is the mad axe murderer? - is hardly mysterious at all, and it's a pretty turgid movie. And this even after Corman had changes implemented once he viewed Coppola's finished cut, proclaiming it as near unreleasable and hiring Jack Hill to touch it up.It was always Corman's hope that the film would be a cheap Psycho knock off, and it is, and not a good one at that. Are there signs of great to come from the director? Yes, definitely. But that shouldn't be mistaken as worthy cinema. From blinking corpses to poorly lighted sequences, to kiddie gore effects and the uneven mess of a plot that unfolds once a key character exits the mid-point, the film shows itself as undeserving of the praise heaped on it by some. 5/10