Dementia 13

(1963) **


While cruelly bickering during an evening canoe ride, John Haloran suffers a fatal heart attack much to the chagrin of his opportunist wife Louise. Louise, you see, is not upset about the untimely passing of her beloved, she is pissed off because his demise means that she will not receive a large inheritance once her wealthy, battleaxe of a mother-in-law kicks off. Driven by greed, Louise quickly hatches a plan to ensure that she gets her dough. The first part of her plan involves getting rid of the body, which she handedly achieves by dumping it over the side of the canoe.

The second part of her plan involves forging a letter from John that is designed to convince his family that he has been called to New York on urgent business. The third part of her plan, the complicated part, involves traveling to her deceased husband’s ancestral home, Castle Haloran, to meet his family and to figure out a way to ensure some inheritance.

Upon arrival Louise quickly learns that John’s sister, Kathleen, drowned in the pond abutting the family castle seven years prior and it is now the anniversary of that tragedy. Louise witnesses the family mourn this loss in a bizarre annual ritual, which her mother-in-law insists upon. While watching the machinations of this ritual Louise hatches a plan; drive her mother-in-law, who already believes that her dead daughter haunts the castle, into insanity by using the deceased daughter as leverage. Her plan, which is complicated, involves taking some of the deceased little girl’s toys, diving into the pond where she drowned, and arranging them underwater is such a manner that they will eventually rise to the surface creating much creepiness. She decides to do this at night, of course. Much to her horror she discovers a shrine to Kathleen on the bottom of the pond, and Kathleen’s perfectly preserved body, which freaks her out.

As if this isn’t stressful enough, as soon as she attempts to climb out of the pond someone tries to behead her.

Louise’s attempts at chicanery stir up old family secrets, kind of like poking a beehive with a stick, or publishing anti-Muslim cartoons. It seems that Kathleen’s death was not accidental and someone is going through great lengths to protect the secret of this “tragedy”. Soon family members begin to die and deeply buried madness emerges.

Dementia 13 is mostly notable for being Francis Ford Coppola's first film. What you get is b-movie material by an up and coming a-list director. Marginally entertaining, the “whodunit?” mystery is really not that difficult to unravel. The murderer is fairly obvious and is telegraphed early on. The discovery of the underwater shrine is effectively creepy, yet it’s one of those situations where you’ll say to yourself, “How could she see that clearly…underwater…at night?” In real life the “shrine” would be at most a blurry dark spot. Meh, it’s okay.

Watch the entire movie here.