We all know the story of
Dementia 13, both on and off screen. Young filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola (rumor has it his eyebrows were only three feet long then) worked as an editor/assistant director under b-movie guru Roger Corman. After coming in underbudget on
The Young Players, Corman decided to produce a grisly horror film with the remaining cash. Coppola’s script and directorial debut are then the stuff of legend. Even in this schlocky, often times cheesy film one can see the eventual director of cinematic masterpieces like
The Godfather and disasterpieces like Francis Ford Coppola presents Keanu Reeves in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula and, like these two examples,
Dementia 13 runs the gamut from effective, creepy gothic to over the top ax murdering fiend throughout the film. The film, I believe, fell into that public domain miasma that so much classic cinema suffers from and has been released on a dozen DVD compilations so far. The quality of each of these is passable at best so a Blu-ray release of the film set me to drooling. There was no major disappointment… but, well. You remember how excited you were for
Godfather III and, after you saw it, you were like, ‘meh.’ That’s me right now… meh. At least for the Blu-ray Coppola didn’t insert our not-so-masked killer screaming “Nooooooo” at moments of moral anguish. There is no moral anguish in
Dementia 13. There is moral anguish that Nicolas Cage is a Coppola, but nothing stemming from this particular film.
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