Dementia
WHEN Dementia was released in 1955, it was instantly banned by the New York Film Board. "Inhuman, indecent and the quintessence of gruesomeness," they thundered with melodramatic zeal, doubtless rendering cult film lovers the world over desperate to see it in the process.
A stark, unnerving black and white fever dream of a film directed by, or as the trailer suggests "from the imagination of", John Parker, it makes for an odd and unsettling viewing experience today – so quite how it impacted on audiences who stumbled across it in the mid 50s is anyone's guess.
A nightmarish vision of one woman's nocturnal thoughts of murder, maiming and mental collapse it was clearly an influence on the likes of Roman Polanski's 1965 offering Repulsion and David Lynch's hellish calling card Eraserhead (1977).
Indeed, any arty film aiming at capturing mental breakdown and madness on screen owes a considerable debt to Dementia. A woozy mix of film noir, straight horror and Luis Bunuel surrealism, it has no dialogue and relies on inventive use of sound effects and a suitably melodramatic score by George Anthiel to create its not inconsiderable mood.
Not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola's early effort Dementia 13, this journey into madness is the story of a young girl (Adrienne Barnett) who wakes up in a low rent hotel with a severed human hand beside her. Story wise, that's about it really.
The larger than life Bruno VeSota, who also acted as an associate producer on the project, appears as a suitably sleazy villain and the young girl's mental state deteriorates with every passing minute.
Through a series of garish flashbacks we learn how that gruesome item comes to be in her possession and director and writer Parker unravels one of the weirdest hours of fantasy cinema you'll ever encounter.
Parker apparently based the film on a nightmare that his secretary related to him in the office one day and many of the sequences, such as the one where random hands grab at the girl through walls, have become minor classics of the genre.
That the man behind it never made another film hardly matters really. Dementia is a small and perfectly formed cult beauty. It can be enjoyed again, if 'enjoyed' is the right word for such a psychologically skewed experience, thanks to a brand new Blu-ray and DVD reissue from the BFI.
Packed up with the usual love and attention to detail you expect from the Institute, it offers an impressive array of extras to beef up the short running time of the central attraction. There's a newly recorded commentary track from Diabolique magazine head honcho Kat Ellinger, loving tributes to the film from the likes of Gremlins director Joe Dante and even an alternative cut from 1957 that sees it re-titled Daughter of Horror and padded out with extra narration from actor Ed McMahon.
Highly revered in cult circles but long hard to access, this is the perfect way to experience what Variety magazine called "The strangest film ever offered for theatrical release". All things considered, you'd be out of your mind to miss it.
