Dementia (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Surreal, weird fantasy; a fascinating one - off
Disadvantages:	May be too weird for some

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Starring:

Adrienne Barrett as The Gamine
Bruno VeSota as Rich Man
Ben Roseman as Gamine's Father / Plainclothes Cop
Richard Barron as Evil One

This is one weird film - probably one of the, if not THE, very weirdest you'll ever see. Although classified on Ciao as 'Horror', it really is a one-off that defies categorisation. This 1955 production is a very dark, very surreal, very odd and somewhat disturbing film that, if there was a category called 'Nightmare', it would probably be the one this film comes under. It has far more in common with 1920s German Expressionism and the Surrealist movement, than any modern definition of a horror film.

The film consists of a series of frightening experiences a young woman encounters during one night in a bad part of a big city, after she wakes up in a cheap hotel room. There is no dialogue in the movie, just a brilliant soundtrack consisting of cool 1950s jazz, avant-garde orchestral music, and the voice of a woman singing wordlessly and hauntingly in horror-style 'Oooo-WOOO-oooo-ooo's and 'Ahhh-AHH-ahhh-ahhh's, crescendo-ing and de-crescendo-ing as befits the tension of the moment - it's actually very reminiscent of the singing on the opening titles of the original Star Trek series, so that gives you some idea of the sound and style here. The acting is more like that of mime than that of a typical 'silent' movie - exaggerated and dance-like. A very, very strange film.

The singing is by Marni Nixon, who was a popular movie soundtrack artist supplying many musicals with the dubbed-in singing voice for lead actresses who were not singers themselves, such as Maria in 'West Side Story', Eliza Doolittle in 'My Fair Lady' and Sister Sophia in 'The Sound of Music'. The haunting orchestral music was written by George Antheil, noted 20th century avant-garde composer.

Made in 1955, this movie met with a baffled reception by filmgoers and gained little box office return - in fact, it was only able to obtain very limited distribution and was even banned in New York for three years, not shown there until 1958. To try to make it more palatable/commercial for the masses, it was re-released in 1957 with a new name, 'Daughter of Horror', and an added narration track (voiced by Ed McMahon, later Johnny Carson's sidekick on the old 'Tonight' show, of all people!) that gave a play-by-play description of things the heroine sees and does so that the baffled viewers could know what was going on.

This 'dumbing-down' unfortunately spoiled the surreal fantasy feel of the film, and so it bombed yet again. Probably the way it's best known today, is that it was the movie playing in the cinema sequence in the 1958 Sci-Fi film starring Steve McQueen, 'The Blob'.

My own copy is the narrated version. The film starts with total blackness and, if you have the narrated version, a dramatic male voice saying 'You. You out there. Do you know what HORROR is? Smug. Confident. Secure, because you are SANE. Do you know what madness is, or how it strikes?' he sneers. 'Do you know that in the world of the insane, you'll find a kind of truth, more terrifying than fiction.' We now see a flashing neon 'HOTEL' sign in the darkness, and he continues 'Come with me, into the tormented haunted half-lit night of the insane. This is my world. Let me lead you into it. Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad.'

Now if they had just left the narration at that, so that we're sort of set up and understand what kind of story we're going to be dealing with, that would have been fine. But he rambles on and on, really labouring the point, until you feel like shouting 'Yeah, yeah, OK, we get it, she's nuts!' As the topic of this review deals with the un-narrated version, you will be spared all the rest of the narrated drivel.

We see a young woman (referred to only as 'The Gamine' in the credits for the film) thrashing in her hotel bed, and are shown scenes of her nightmare, of someone walking fully-clothed out of the ocean on a deserted stormy beach, the woman singer trilling over the scenario. The figure hesitates, then runs back into the surf, to be engulfed by a huge wave and drowned. At this point The Gamine wakes up, sitting up in bed, looking struck with blind terror. Walking around her room in a dazed, trancelike state, she goes to the chest of drawers, takes out a large knife, and smiles. She puts on her jacket and ventures outside.

She buys a newspaper from a midget newsman, who chuckles at her as he points out the huge headlines: 'MYSTERIOUS STABBING'. She reads this with interest, with what appears to be a self-satisfied smirk. Tossing the paper onto the ground, she walks on. She wanders through dark streets and alleyways, encountering drunks, people fighting, all sorts of unsavoury characters. A Lothario with pencil moustache tries to pick her up. In a limousine nearby, a fat rich man looking like the older Orson Welles at his worst takes her to a series of nightclubs.

One sleazy and dodgy event follows another (which I won't spoil for you, but take my word for it, it's all iffy and sometimes gruesome) until she finds herself fleeing into the streets, bumping into one nightmarish character or situation after another - including, at about 39 and a half minutes into the film, someone who is the spitting image of Frodo Baggins as played by Elijah Wood in the recent Lord of the Rings movies. Following her encounter with Frodo, we see her descend deeper and deeper into madness until the film's frightening conclusion.

I recommend this if you want to see the weirdest film you are ever likely to see. If you have a liking for the darker side of 1950s culture, music and atmosphere, you will probably like this. It really is an oddity and as far as I know, one of a kind. Get the original version, 'Dementia' if you can find it, but if not, the re-release, 'Daughter of Horror', is now public domain and can be downloaded for free from The Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/daughter_of_horror. For some reason, 'Dementia' itself is not public domain. So watch 'Daughter of Horror' and try to tune out the lame narration, and you still are in for a strange treat.

Also on Ciao.com as EsmeraldaDragon and dooyooco.uk as thereddragon.