Dementia 13 (1963): watch the full film free, legally

A death beside the lake

Dementia 13 is a 1963 horror thriller written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in his feature-film directorial debut. Released in the United Kingdom as The Haunted and the Hunted, it stars William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton, Mary Mitchel, Eithne Dunne and Patrick Magee. Roger Corman produced the film through The Filmgroup, and American International Pictures released it in the United States in the fall of 1963 as the lower half of a double bill with Corman's X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes.

John Haloran and his wife Louise argue while rowing on a lake after dark. Louise is angered by the terms of John's wealthy mother's will, which directs the estate to charity in the name of Kathleen, a mysterious figure. John suffers a heart attack during the argument and tells Louise that she will inherit nothing if he dies before his mother. After his death, Louise drops his body into the lake and plans to act as though he remains alive. She writes to Lady Haloran and invites herself to the Haloran castle in Ireland while John is supposedly away on business.

At the castle, John's brothers Billy and Richard join Lady Haloran in an annual ceremony for Kathleen, their younger sister, who drowned in an accident years earlier. Lady Haloran is still consumed by grief and superstition. Louise sees an opportunity to manipulate her mother-in-law by arranging for Kathleen's old toys to rise from the estate pond. Instead, she sees what appears to be Kathleen's preserved body under the water. An unknown attacker, armed with an axe, kills Louise after she surfaces.

Family doctor Justin Caleb arrives and begins questioning the household. A poacher named Simon is also killed on the estate. Caleb orders the pond drained, revealing a shrine and a headstone carrying the inscription “Forgive Me, Kathleen.” As fear closes around the Haloran family, the doctor follows clues involving a nursery rhyme recited by Billy under hypnosis.

Coppola's rapid Irish production

Coppola had worked as a sound man on Corman's The Young Racers, filmed in several countries and completed in Ireland. When that production ended, $22,000 of its $165,000 budget remained. Corman could not make a quick film himself because of his schedule, so he proposed that Coppola stay in Ireland with a small crew and direct a low-budget horror picture. Coppola had previously been involved with at least two sexploitation films, but Dementia 13 was his first mainstream legitimate directorial effort.

Corman wanted a cheap, homicidal copy of Psycho, with gothic atmosphere and a brutal knife killing. Coppola later said he wrote the script to those specifications. He drafted the basic story in one night, then described a scene in which a half-naked woman ties dolls beneath a lake and emerges at the feet of an axe murderer. Corman gave him the $22,000. Coppola secured another $20,000 by pre-selling European rights to producer Raymond Stross, without telling Corman.

Coppola's friend Al Locatelli was art director and helped write the final script in three days without credit. Campbell recalled that the haste produced stilted dialogue that actors found difficult to say. Many American performers were Coppola's UCLA friends and paid their own way to Ireland. Most Irish cast members came from the Abbey Theatre and received minimum wage. The cast and crew shared a farmhouse outside Dublin.

Principal photography began on September 10, 1962, at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Ireland, under the working title Dementia. Howth Castle, in the Dublin suburb of Howth, played Castle Haloran. Coppola worked without interference during filming, but Corman rejected the completed version and requested changes. Jack Hill shot added scenes involving Karl Schanzer as a poacher, while Monte Hellman directed a five-minute prologue built around a “D-13 Test” for theater patrons.

Mixed notices and a restored cut

Reviews have been mixed. H. T. of The New York Times wrote that the film stressed gore over atmosphere and buried a workable plot. Michael Weldon cited a trick ending, shocking axe murders and inventive photography. Tom Raynes of the Time Out Film Guide praised the imaginative use of the Irish castle, the gothic atmosphere and Patrick Magee's cameo. Danny Peary found the horror sequences exciting despite what he called a confusing storyline.

In 2017, Coppola's company American Zoetrope restored the director's cut under James T. Mockoski's supervision. Robert Schafer edited it, Jim McKee of Earwax Productions handled sound restoration, and Chris Martin of Mission Film and Design supervised color. The film is in the public domain.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “Dementia 13”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.