Tag: Francis Ford Coppola

F. F. Coppola’s “debut” film, as long as, like Francis himself, you don’t count the nudie films he worked on before it of course. I haven’t seen this possibly since the ’90s, back when I got it on VHS… at which time I remember being amazed that a film from 1963 was rated R here in Australia, and I assume that 1) it had been given that rating in the 70s and whoever put the video out couldn’t be bothered playing the OFLC for a new one, or 2) the distributor was bullshitting that detail. (OFLC most recently rated it M 20 years ago, per their database, which is more sensible.) And this is the first time I’ve actually seen the so-called “director’s cut”, too; the film as released in 1963 contained some additional footage shot by Jack Hill cos producer Roger Corman wanted another axe murder. I only discovered Coppola’s markedly shorter version (or at least this reconstruction of it) even existed a day or ago, and now, after a little searching among my usual *cough* sources, I’ve duly watched it…

Now, even back in the 90s when I first watched it, I could tell Dementia 13 was basically a Psycho knock-off, and Coppola cheerfully acknowledges as much in the commentary (though he says it was an indirect one by way of William Castle’s Homicidal); apparently Corman and American International had expressed an interest in such a thing, so Coppola offered him such a thing (replacing the knife with an axe and changing the family dynamic at work), Corman gave him a piffling budget left over from another production (classic Corman), and was then kind of disappointed by the end result. As noted, Jack Hill got told to shoot another murder scene (not in this version, though this other axe victim is still listed in the credits). This character’s removal is probably an improvement, cos the film is a bit unbalanced and unsteady as it is; Coppola is clearly unsure of exactly how to cast viewer suspicion away from the killer onto an innocent character, and Patrick Magee’s weirdly unsettling family doctor really should’ve been in the film more than he was. But, let’s face it, Dementia 13 is what it is, i.e. a cheaply and quickly turned out B film (it came out on a double bill with Corman’s X) with no higher aspirations to be anything else, it’s reasonably well made and effective on the whole, and Corman’s interference with it didn’t harm Coppola’s future career. Alas, Francis would eventually prove perfectly capable of doing that himself…