DEMENTIA 13 (2017)

Studio:       Chiller Films
Director:    Richard LeMay
Writer:       Dan De Filippo, Justin Smith
Producer:  Dan De Filippo
Stars:     Julia Campanelli, Ana Isabelle, Marianne Noscheze, Channing Pickett, Steve Polites, Christian Ryan, Leila Grace, Ben van Berkum, Roland Sands, Donal Brophy, Leif Steinert

Review Score:

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Summary:

A ghost, an ax murderer, two thieves, and an estranged family converge upon a castle where everyone’s secrets are exposed.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Louise wakes from unconsciousness on the floor of Castle Haloran to chase her new husband John Haloran to a rowboat outside. John mentions his sister Kathleen dying at age six as the couple argues about his wealthy mother’s money. John slaps Louise and warns that he knows what she is plotting. Louise pulls a gun, firing a shot that disfigures John’s cheek. The couple physically fights until Louise seemingly beats John to death with an oar and dumps his body in the water.

Two Weeks Later – Family matriarch Gloria Haloran arrives at the estate with her daughter Rose and Rose’s husband Dale for an annual memorial for Kathleen. Rose finds Louise, who claims to not know where John went, and discovers she married her brother against their family’s wishes. Rose worries about her mother’s dementia when she catches Gloria speaking to Kathleen’s ghost.

Various conversations occur amongst everyone at the mansion as the day continues. Dale notes that a collection of Japanese masks is missing one mask. At night, Louise secretly cuts the wires in one of the mansion’s cable boxes.

Under the guise of going for a run the following morning, Louise hides John’s cellphone in her concealed car. She then calls her partner in crime Ray to put their plan into motion.

A ghostly voice leads Louise further into the nearby forest. Louise confronts a masked man in a hooded cloak. The man chases Louise and murders her with an ax.

Rose catches Gloria apparently speaking to Kathleen’s ghost again. Rose’s younger sister Billy arrives at the mansion with her boyfriend Kane.

Rose, Dale, Billy, and Kane have breakfast with Gloria, who cradles a small doll. Gloria forbids Kane from coming to the memorial service since he is not a family member. Claiming that their family made its fortune through greed and blood money, Gloria announces to the chagrin of her children that she plans on giving away everything to an orphanage. When paranormal activity seemingly breaks an item on the table, Gloria claims Kathleen is coming for the person who killed her. Rose and Dale hear a nearby thud and find an ax embedded in a door.

While Ray waits in his car with his partner Wood, their accomplice Perry gets shot while attempting to rob a gun shop. Seeing him as a liability, Ray executes Perry.

Rose discusses Gloria’s worsening dementia with the castle’s groundskeeper Arthur. Billy introduces Kane to Arthur, who takes Kane on a tour of the property. Arthur mentions Kathleen’s unfortunate death and also shows Kane an ominous secret passage.

Father Matos conducts the memorial service over Kathleen’s grave with Gloria, Rose, Dale, and Billy. Dale asks Rose about a tombstone for Japanese workers who died while constructing the castle. Gloria is drawn away by a voice, but falls faint when she realizes the voice belongs to a trapped soul of one of the workers. Dale, Billy, and the priest escort Gloria inside.

A text sent from John’s phone summons Rose to the stables. There, the masked man confronts Rose and chases her with his ax.

Rose rushes back to the mansion to warn everyone they have to leave. Gloria cautions that Kathleen wants to keep them there. Through a window, the masked man taunts the family from outside.

Ray and Wood arrive and gun down the masked man. The thieves then take everyone hostage and tie them up inside the mansion.

Ray demands to know where Louise is. He also notices that Dale isn’t among the five people captured. Gloria taunts Ray. Ray responds by executing Father Matos.

Wood realizes the masked man’s body is missing. Wood goes outside to search for it and encounters a doll that appears to be supernatural. When he returns to Ray, Wood warns that something is amiss and Louise seemingly set them up as patsies.

Wood takes Rose upstairs. Rose uses the diversion to run and hide when Wood investigates the sound of a child laughing and ends up locked in Kathleen’s bedroom. Wood screams for Ray when Kathleen’s doll seemingly attacks him. Ray shoots the lock on the bedroom door to get inside, but discovers he shot Wood in the head. An unseen presence recovers Ray’s gun and kills him.

Still tied up downstairs, Gloria warns Billy that Kathleen wants her to confess. Kathleen’s ghost appears to both women behind Kane, prompting Billy to admit that she didn’t call for help on the day she discovered Kathleen drowning.

While searching on his own for a way to aid the others, Dale gets Ray’s car started. He then returns inside to untie Gloria, Billy, and Kane.

Rose encounters the masked man again. Rose flees into a hidden passageway leading to a makeshift domicile where someone was self-treating bloody wounds. Rose flees outside with the masked man still in pursuit. Arthur comes to Rose’s rescue, but she continues running, thinking Arthur may be the masked man.

Dale gets Gloria, Billy, and Kane to the car, but discovers it no longer starts. Gloria again warns that Kathleen wants everyone to stay with her ghost forever. Rose runs to reunite with Dale, but the masked man throws his ax into Dale’s back, killing him.

All three women rush back into the mansion while Kane remains in the car. Kane is strangled from behind.

Gloria, Rose, and Billy enter a room where film footage of Kathleen is projected onto a wall. Arthur enters. The masked man appears behind Arthur and beats him to death. The murderer then unmasks himself, revealing he is actually John, disfigured from being shot in his face and wearing a bulletproof vest.

John explains that he uncovered Louise’s plot to marry him for money before hiring men to torture, extort, and kill everyone in the family. John also claims that Kathleen’s ghost took care of those he didn’t kill as part of his plan to inherit everything.

John offers to split the money 50/50 with whichever sister agrees to shoot Gloria, so that he isn’t suspiciously the only person left standing and can have dirt on the sibling. Billy takes John’s gun only to turn it on him. Gloria and Rose flee. John recovers from Billy’s shot and strangles Billy to death.

John wounds Gloria with a bullet as he catches up to his mother and sister. During the trio’s subsequent confrontation, John reveals that Rose actually drowned Kathleen and Billy didn’t arrive until after.

Gloria drops dead as the doors lock and the lights go out. Kathleen’s ghost appears, forcing Rose to confess to pushing Kathleen into the lake as children. The ghost supernaturally drags Rose outside to the lake and drowns her.

Back in the mansion, John asks the presence what more it wants from him. The doors supernaturally lock John inside.

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Review:

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1963 directorial debut “Dementia 13” is one of those public domain thrillers like “Night of the Living Dead,” “Carnival of Souls,” or “Plan 9 from Outer Space” that appears on almost every horror DVD budget pack ever created.  If you own anything along the lines of “50 Fright Films Collection!” or “25 Classic Terrors for $4.99,” you more than likely have “Dementia 13” on a disc in there somewhere.

Somehow, I’ve never actually sat down to give the movie its due with a viewing, despite it undoubtedly crossing my path on more occasions than can be counted.  Its status as a common inclusion on cheapo compilations subconsciously soured me on considering it in any way essential, so I’ve mostly dismissed the film as a Corman quickie whose main relevance is as a Coppola curiosity.

Having now seen Chiller Films’ 2017 remake, the only fresh inspiration I might have to finally plunge into the original would be to verify if it is as bizarrely ill-conceived as this updated version.  Either that or to see if problems with plotting, pacing, and production stem from the source material or are entirely new issues.  Alas, I’m not driven to solve such mediocre mysteries.  Maybe the movie’s macabre melodrama worked 54 years earlier.  Today, it plays like a silly soap opera shot as a feature film, with all the same overwrought writing and exaggerated acting usually reserved for daytime TV.

The story involves an implausible convergence of a scheming gold digger, her hired gun accomplices, a masked ax murderer, a drowned girl’s vengeful ghost, and a family full of ingrates whose wealthy matriarch talks to dolls.  If that sounds like a nutty amount of nonsense to pack into a slow-burn gothic chiller, wait until a shifty groundskeeper and some backstory about dead Japanese construction workers swirls into the mix.

Considering everything coming together on the grounds of Castle Haloran, where disputes over money mar a memorial service with various nefarious intentions, you’d think the movie wouldn’t be so ploddingly dull.  And yet its faint pulse can’t sustain a full blip of intrigue, despite only having to beat for 80 minutes of semi-supernatural suspense.

Enough ham exists in “Dementia 13” to put HoneyBaked out of business.  Actors are all over the place, with some fighting to swallow mismatched accents while others perform as though they’re on a Branson, Missouri dinner theater stage.

A big bite of blame falls on dreadful dialogue.  In its dizzying tailspin to whip up more than one mystery, lines lean in excessively cryptic directions with consistently vague references to “it” or other unknown entities.  One woman phones someone with the instruction, “just get it done.”  Another says, “he is the only one who can talk her out of it,” while someone responds, “talk her out of what?”  Viewers sighingly pine to find out too, and the movie doesn’t make the wait interesting.

Additionally dippy exchanges include one crook suggesting he and his partner “ride off into the sunset, like Butch and Sundance,” without a hint of irony.  Another features forceful foreshadowing when someone says, “the place looks good,” and her companion ominously warns, “looks can be deceiving.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter much since the material isn’t engaging to begin with, but poor editing confusingly trips up the tempo.  In one sequence, a woman is seen checking doors in the mansion looking for someplace to hide.  The next shot shows a man outside running toward a car less than one hundred yards away.  Cut to a third tangent that plays out over a two-minute period before jumping back to the man getting in the car, and then finally to the first woman opening a door.  “Dementia 13” either has a peculiar sense of timing, or simply doesn’t grasp how to edit concurrent threads together for pacing.

In the ‘Pros’ column, where entries are few, the sprawling castle grounds make for a visually terrific location.  So much so that the camera can’t stop sweeping in on an overhead drone for yet another establishing shot during every other scene change.  Production design lifts the look a great deal, only to be boned by sore thumb shortcuts such as a prosthetic face wound that looks like it is trying to conceal a baseball on the actor’s cheek.  At least the crew knows enough to film him in profile from the other side of his face.

I don’t know if Coppola’s version also included a cast of inconsistent talent or more storylines than it had the ability to handle.  But even without having seen it, I can say with certainty that “Dementia 13” 2017 ends up more like its predecessor than it probably planned on.  By that I mean we can expect the flimsy film to quietly join its 1963 brother as forgotten budget-pack filler.

Review Score:  30

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