Dementia 13

Which One Is The Killer?

While working as the sound man on The Young Racer (1963), a cheap racing picture shot in Europe, Francis Ford Coppola talked Roger Corman into letting him direct a horror film in Ireland for $20,000. You hold the result in your hands: Dementia 13.

Little Kathleen's drowning hangs over the Haloran family. And as the dark secrets of the girl's mysterious demise begin to come to light, a series of gory axe murders begin to whittle away at Coppola's already-small cast. That impressive cast includes Luana Anders (Pit And The Pendulum, Easy Rider), William Campbell (Love Me Tender, TV's Star Trek) and Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange).

Coppola wrote the Psycho-esque script and invited friends from UCLA to work on the picture if they could make their way to Ireland. He then scrounged up an extra 20 grand and conned Ardmore studios into letting him shoot there for nothing.

Making good use of the marshes and castles of the Irish seaside and promoted with the "D-13 Test" (to make sure you're mentally prepared to see this motion picture, this DVD includes the test), Coppola's creepy Dementia 13 still delivers the goods.