Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Written by: Francis Ford Coppola
Executive Producer: Roger Corman
Starring: William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton, Mary Mitchell, Patrick Magee, Eithne Dunne, Peter Read

STORY
The Haloran family has a problem.
Actually, the Haloran family has several problems.
Money.
Secrets.
Death.
An Irish castle that practically screams SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED HERE.
And an axe.
Never forget the axe.
Louise Haloran is boating with her husband, John, when an argument about his family's inheritance becomes unexpectedly final.
John suffers a heart attack.
And dies.
Most loving wives might respond to this development with grief.
Louise responds with something closer to:
What does this do to my inheritance?
Because John has made it painfully clear that if he dies before his mother, Louise isn't getting the family money.
Well.
That's inconvenient.
So Louise does what any completely reasonable, emotionally healthy human being would do.
She conceals her husband's death.
And heads for the Haloran family estate in Ireland pretending John is still alive.
Welcome to Dementia 13.
Louise arrives at Castle Haloran and discovers a family still psychologically trapped by another death—the drowning of young Kathleen Haloran years earlier.
Kathleen is gone.
But she has never really left.
Her mother, Lady Haloran, remains obsessed with the memory of her dead daughter. Every year the family performs a strange memorial ritual for Kathleen, keeping the child's death alive within the walls of the estate.
Louise sees opportunity.
If she can convince Lady Haloran that she has some mysterious connection to Kathleen—or perhaps that Kathleen herself is reaching beyond the grave—she might secure a place in the older woman's will.
It is cynical.
Manipulative.
Greedy.
And in a normal movie, Louise might be the most dangerous person in the house.
This is not a normal movie.
Louise begins engineering little supernatural events intended to convince Lady Haloran that Kathleen is communicating with them.
But Castle Haloran already contains secrets Louise knows nothing about.
And then she goes to the pond.
The same pond connected to Kathleen's death.
She dives beneath the water.
She arranges her little deception.
She surfaces.
And somewhere nearby…
someone has an axe.
Suddenly Dementia 13 announces exactly what kind of movie Francis Coppola and Roger Corman have invited us to watch.
This isn't merely Gothic atmosphere.
Someone is killing people.
Violently.
And the Haloran family's elaborate mourning rituals may be hiding something considerably darker than grief.
As bodies begin accumulating, Dr. Justin Caleb arrives.
Played with wonderfully imposing authority by Patrick Magee, Caleb begins examining not merely the murders but the family itself.
Because somebody at Castle Haloran knows more than they're saying.
Perhaps several people do.
Richard Haloran carries his own burdens.
Billy Haloran has returned with his fiancée Kane.
Lady Haloran remains consumed by Kathleen.
And somewhere inside this decaying family structure, memory has curdled into madness.
Coppola surrounds them with everything a Gothic horror film ought to have:
An ancient estate.
Fog.
Dark corridors.
Family secrets.
A dead child.
A pond.
A suspicious doctor.
An inheritance.
And an axe murderer wandering around making the inheritance increasingly easier to divide.
But underneath the familiar ingredients, something else is happening.
A young filmmaker is experimenting.
Coppola moves his camera.
He uses reflections.
Water becomes threatening.
Shadows become architecture.
The castle isn't simply where the story happens.
It feels infected by the story.
And although Dementia 13 was created as an exploitation picture—something inexpensive and frightening that Roger Corman could sell to audiences—there are moments when the movie reaches beyond its assignment.
You can see someone behind the camera asking:
What else can I do with this shot?
That someone was Francis Ford Coppola.
The filmmaker who would eventually give cinema the Corleone family was already fascinated by another damaged family.
The scale would change enormously.
The budget would change beyond recognition.
The actors would become legends.
But here, in this tiny black-and-white horror movie, Coppola was already looking at family, death, ritual, guilt, inheritance and the terrible things people do when the past refuses to remain buried.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

BEFORE THE GODFATHER…
This is the reason Dementia 13 belongs in the AIN Treasure Chest.
The name on the director's credit is:
Francis Coppola.
He hadn't yet become Francis Ford Coppola, one of the defining American filmmakers of his generation.
There was no The Godfather.
No The Godfather Part II.
No The Conversation.
No Apocalypse Now.
There was a young filmmaker working in the low-budget world of Roger Corman.
Everybody starts somewhere.
This is one of Coppola's beginnings.

ENTER ROGER CORMAN
Roger Corman had a remarkable eye for talent.
His filmmaking universe became an unofficial training ground for people who would eventually transform American cinema.
Coppola worked for Corman in several capacities before getting his opportunity to make Dementia 13.
And the opportunity arose in wonderfully Corman fashion:
They already had people, equipment and access to Ireland. Why not make another movie?
That philosophy is practically independent filmmaking reduced to one sentence.
What do we already have?
What can we make with it?
GO.

THE YOUNG RACERS GIVES BIRTH TO A HORROR MOVIE
Corman and his crew were in Europe making The Young Racers.
Coppola was working on that production.
Rather than simply pack everything up afterward, Coppola developed a horror story that could take advantage of resources already available.
William Campbell and Luana Anders, who had worked on The Young Racers, became central players in Dementia 13.
Equipment was there.
People were there.
Locations were available.
Coppola saw a movie.
THAT is an independent filmmaker.

NINE DAYS
Coppola was reportedly given a shooting schedule of approximately nine days at Ardmore Studios in Ireland, with some additional location work.
Nine.
Days.
Castle.
Pond.
Murders.
Actors.
Night photography.
An axe.
Atmosphere.
Coverage.
GO.
There is no room for preciousness under those conditions.
You make decisions.
You solve problems.
You get the shot.
THREE DAYS TO WRITE IT
The production schedule wasn't the only thing moving quickly.
Coppola reportedly wrote the screenplay in a marathon lasting roughly three days and nights, preparing pages rapidly enough to get them into the hands of cast and crew.
Three days to write it.
Nine days to shoot much of it.
And people are still watching it more than sixty years later.
AIN filmmakers, take note.

PSYCHO IS IN THE ROOM
Coppola later acknowledged exactly what kind of movie Dementia 13 was intended to be.
Psycho had been a sensation.
William Castle had followed with Homicidal.
Roger Corman understood the marketplace.
Audiences wanted psychological horror, shocking murders and dangerous family secrets.
So Dementia 13 was conceived partly in that commercial atmosphere.
But imitation can become education.
Give a talented young filmmaker an assignment inspired by somebody else's success and occasionally he begins discovering his own language.
THE AXE
Ohhhhh, that axe.
The violence in Dementia 13 has an abruptness that still lands.
Coppola understood that the anticipation of violence and the suddenness of violence could work together.
This wasn't simply old-fashioned Gothic horror where somebody wanders through a castle holding a candle.
Sometimes the candle goes out.
And somebody brings an axe.

ROGER CORMAN WANTED MORE
When Corman saw Coppola's rough cut, he wasn't entirely satisfied.
He felt the story needed additional clarity—and, being Roger Corman, additional violence certainly wasn't going to hurt.
Filmmaker Jack Hill was brought in to create supplemental material, including additional violent footage.
So even Coppola's early filmmaking education included one of cinema's eternal lessons:
The producer has notes.

THE D-13 TEST
And then Roger Corman did something wonderfully Roger Corman.
For original theatrical presentations, audiences could encounter a special promotional prologue featuring an actor portraying a psychiatrist.
Moviegoers were subjected to a “D-13 Test” designed to determine whether they were psychologically prepared to withstand the movie.
Questions included fears involving death and drowning.
Was this legitimate psychiatric screening?
Oh, PLEASE.
It was SHOWMANSHIP.
William Castle would have understood completely.
The movie hadn't even started and Corman was already working the audience.
WHY “13”?
The film was originally conceived under the title Dementia.
One problem:
There had already been a 1955 film called Dementia.
So the filmmakers added:
13.
Instantly, the title became more ominous.
Dementia 13.
Sometimes marketing doesn't need a committee.
It needs a scary number.

THE HAUNTED AND THE HUNTED
When the movie reached Great Britain, audiences encountered it under another wonderfully pulpy title:
The Haunted and the Hunted.
Not subtle.
But VERY Fear Frenzy.

PATRICK MAGEE
And let's give Patrick Magee his flowers.
Horror fans recognize that extraordinary face and voice, but Magee's career extended far beyond genre pictures.
He became closely associated with playwright Samuel Beckett, who wrote Krapp's Last Tape with Magee's voice in mind.
Later film audiences would know him from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.
Here, as Dr. Justin Caleb, Magee brings exactly the kind of authority a movie like Dementia 13 needs.
When Patrick Magee enters a room, you LISTEN.
LUANA ANDERS
Luana Anders was part of the extraordinary community of actors surrounding Roger Corman's low-budget productions.
She appeared in The Young Racers before becoming Louise Haloran here and would continue working extensively in film and television.
Later movie audiences might recognize her from films including Easy Rider.
But Dementia 13 gives her something particularly delicious:
Louise begins the movie behaving as though she's the cleverest person in the story.
Horror movies have a way of correcting that assumption.

THE COPPOLA-CORMAN SCHOOL OF FILMMAKING
Roger Corman didn't operate a literal film school.
But look at the filmmakers and performers who passed through his world.
Francis Ford Coppola.
Jack Nicholson.
Peter Bogdanovich.
Martin Scorsese.
Jonathan Demme.
Ron Howard.
James Cameron.
And many others.
Corman gave ambitious people opportunities because inexpensive filmmaking required young talent willing to work quickly.
Hollywood history benefited enormously.
Sometimes the greatest contribution a producer makes isn't merely the movies he produces.
It's the filmmakers he lets begin.

ELEANOR NEIL — AND ANOTHER COPPOLA STORY BEGINS
There was another important meeting during the making of Dementia 13.
Eleanor Neil worked on the production as a set decorator.
During production she and Francis Coppola became romantically involved.
They married in 1963.
As Eleanor Coppola, she would become a filmmaker and artist in her own right and later documented the famously turbulent making of Apocalypse Now in footage that became central to Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.
So while one Coppola filmmaking story was beginning in Ireland…
another Coppola story was beginning too.

YOU CAN SEE THE EYE
Coppola later remembered something remarkable about Dementia 13.
Despite all its limitations, he remained particularly pleased with aspects of its visual filmmaking.
And you can understand why.
Because he had so little time and such limited resources, Coppola personally thought intensely about how shots should be composed.
Watch the movie not merely for the story.
Watch where he puts the camera.
Watch the water.
Watch the shadows.
Watch the architecture.
Watch bodies positioned within frames.
You are watching a filmmaker learning what images can do.

THE PUBLIC-DOMAIN COPPOLA
The original Dementia 13 became widely circulated in the United States as a public-domain title.
That availability helped make this strange early Coppola film accessible to generations who wanted to see where one of America's great filmmakers began.
But AIN remembers our rule:
Public-domain FILM does not automatically mean every later restoration, re-edit or release is public domain.
Modern restorations and Coppola's later director's-cut presentation contain separately created or newly protected elements.
For the AIN Treasure Chest, we want the original 1963 version and a rights-safe copy of that original film.

THE AIN FINAL WORD
There is something deeply moving about watching an important filmmaker before anyone knows he's important.
Francis Ford Coppola wasn't yet the man Hollywood would entrust with The Godfather.
He wasn't collecting Oscars.
He wasn't commanding enormous productions.
He was young.
He was ambitious.
He had Roger Corman.
He had Ireland.
He had a tiny crew.
He had almost no money.
He had nine days.
And he had a camera.
So he made a movie.
Is Dementia 13 The Godfather?
Of course not.
That's precisely why it matters.
Great artists don't emerge fully formed.
They experiment.
They imitate.
They fail.
They solve problems.
They discover things.
They make the next movie.

And occasionally history gives us the wonderful privilege of going back and watching the moment before everybody else noticed what was coming.

Inside Dementia 13 is a young filmmaker learning to command images.

Nine years later, The Godfather would arrive.
But first…
there was an Irish castle, a dead girl, a family full of secrets—and one very sharp axe.

Everybody starts somewhere.

Even Coppola...

AIN remembers where.