Dementia

Plot synopsis:
A young woman awakens from a nightmare in a run down hotel. She leaves the lodging and wanders into the night. She encounters a dwarf hawking newspapers with the bold headline "Mysterious stabbing." She smiles enigmatically and quickly walks on. In a dark alley, a wino approaches and grabs her. A policeman rescues her and beats up the drunken man as she leaves. Along her way, a pimp, sharply dressed with a pencil-thin mustache, approaches her and cajoles her into escorting a porcine rich man in a chauffeured limousine. As they cruise the through the night, she thinks back to her tragic youth and her abusive father. She had stabbed him to death with a switchblade after he shot and killed her unfaithful mother.
The rich man takes her to bars and nightclubs and finally to his elegant high-rise apartment. He first ignores her as he feasts on an extensive meal. She tempts him, and when he advances on her, she stabs him with her switchblade, pushing the dying man out of an upper story window. As he topples, he grabs a pendant around her neck and it snaps as he plummets. The crazed woman races out of the building onto the street and confronts the body. The dead man's hand still grasps her pendant in an iron grip! She saws it off with her knife and flees with it, as she imagines faceless passersby watching her impassively. Again, a patrol car appears. The same cop, with a strange frozen smile tracks her with a spotlight as she flees on and on. He seems to have her father's face. She runs around a corner, hiding the severed hand in a blind flower girl's basket. The pimp reappears and drags her into a club. An enthusiastic audience watches a jazz band playing. The smiling policeman enters, as the corpse of the rich man lies at the window pointing to his murderess with a bloody stump.
Now everyone knows! The crowd surges forward, encircling her, laughing maniacally. She passes out, reawakening in her dingy hotel room alone. Were all of her encounters a nightmare? She goes to the mirror on the dresser, searching for clues. In her top drawer, she discovers her broken pendant, clutched in the fingers of a severed hand. The camera retreats and moves out into the streets, where a horrified shriek is heard - and the film fades to black.

Tags: avant garde, fantasy, murder, cult, violence, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, sadist

Review:
Were it just a Film Noire murder story, it would still be a very good movie.
There are also the intriguing comparisons one could make between the "silent" version and the narrated one.As a horror movie in-itself, it may appear somewhat cheesy and overstated, but it clearly does not take itself too seriously, and you shouldn't either.
Even at under an hour, this film drags a bit in the middle but has so much going for it that it has to be called a "must-see."  Definitely see the dialog-free version (DEMENTIA) before you see the narrated version (DAUGHTER OF HORROR) but do see both of them because the narration by future Tonight Show co-host Ed McMahon is priceless!
Finally after a long wait we can see the original version of "Dementia" which was re released two years later as "Daughter of Horror" , cut by two minutes and featured the notoriously bad voice over by the unknown (outside america) Ed McMahon , which was added as the re releasers thought that the public would not understand what was going on , it did the opposite and has unfairly given the film a bad reputation.
"Dementia" and "Daughter of Horror" (it was given a more salatious title to get audiences in) are both on the disc...with some great extras its worth a look.
I was particularly impressed by the brilliant score by Antheil and sung by Marnie Nixon, later the voice of Maria in the movie West Side Story.Interesting note - In the original movie, The Blob, it is the movie being shown in the movie theater when the kids run in to find their friends.
For those interested in obscure horror films, well worth seeing.After originally seeing it it took almost 10 years to even find a reference to it (partially because of the two names).
Included on the DVD presentation is the re-cut version DAUGHTER OF HORROR, with Ed McMahon (!) providing a hilariously pretentious voice-over that was meant to make the film more accessible to a mainstream audience.
I watched Daughter of Horror, not the original version called Dementia.
One of A Kind, Don't Miss It. Powerful visual style highlights this noir nightmare film, originally made in 1951.
No dialog!!The original director's version (Dementia)is much better than the one with some of the gore cut out, and an intrusive, idiotic Ed McMahon voiceover(Daughter of Darkness).They are both on the DVD, so don't make the mistake of watching the censored "Daughter" version first.Don't miss the highly suggestive "chicken eating" scene.
Anyway, to me, its origins appear puzzling, indeed.All in all, the end result is about as schizoid as the lead female character, combining striking visuals and special effects with amateurish acting and brain-dead narration.
Actually, the visuals suggest that perhaps Welles saw the production before filming Touch of Evil (1957), especially Dementia's skid-row area that resembles Evil's Venice beach locations.Certainly the movie has its cheesy elements.
On the great Kino DVD, the print of "Dementia" is strikingly good; and you get some good information on the film's strange life.>Other than that, this is a one of a kind gem, to say there is nothing else like it is only to get the ball rolling.
It has to be said that the narration courtesy of Ed McMahon is more than a little bit cheesy - some have even compared the film to the 'works' of Ed Wood in that respect (I personally wouldn't go that far) - but his voice-over does have a horrific vibe to it, and it certainly benefits the film.
We then follow this woman throughout the night as she gets involved in a series of activities - things such as encounters with various unsavoury characters and other happenings on the dark streets.The film contains no dialogue, and the only speaking part belongs to the narrator.
In case you ever wondered (and as a true film buff, of course you did) what that strange movie called DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS showing at the cinema being attacked by the blob in THE BLOB is  well, this is it!
It used to be called DEMENTIA and was made by a guy named John Parker at approximately the same time as Ed Wood made GLEN OR GLENDA  they even employed the same cinematographer.In fact the two films have a lot in common, being both very personal cinematic statements, and also sharing the kind of ineptitude that some critics favor.
In fact, condemnation seems to be what's wrong with this young woman rather than her occupation (she's a prostitute) or sexual orientation, as we are invited to share her disgust, in a series of cuts between "the rich man", who  although inexcusably fat and perspiring  looks as if he's enjoying his dinner, and the face of our heroine, which is a mask of hate.Also, the fact that her pimp is being characterized in the credits as "the evil one" may lead you to suspect that the filmmaker is not a complete stranger to the idea that the problems of modern society is best solved by Charles Bronson.
Many critics will undoubtedly prefer Parker to Wood, the former exhibiting a style as familiar as it is primitive.Criminals being followed by floodlights (instead of being arrested) or surrounded by maniacally laughing crowds (instead of being lynched) may not make a lot of sense, but I'm sure you'll find it in the curriculum of every motion picture academy in the world, and of course the inclusion of a jam session does not in any way justify a comparison to a beach monster movie.
The young woman isn't pretty, nor is she very happy about herself (or anybody else for that matter) so I suppose it has to be a serious work of art in spite of the crawling severed hands  personally, I much prefer to enjoy it on the level of hilariously bad film-making..
Dementia (1955) *** (out of 4) Interesting mix of film noir, horror and German Expressionism has a young woman struggling to make it through one night on skid row.
Thompson who was pure poverty row as he worked on films like Maniac, Glen or Glenda?, Plan 9 From Outer Space and other Ed Wood movies.
As with other "silent" films that are given sound, the atmosphere and overall mood is certainly altered here but it's rather neat hearing McMahon's narration because he sounds so incredibly different than what we're use to hearing..
This review is for the "Daughter of Horror" version.The bulk of this odd little gem consists of close-ups of people making goofy faces at the camera (and moving cigars in and out of their mouths), an unseen woman who seems to be working on trying to sing the classic "Star Trek" theme song (but never quite hits the last couple of notes), and a piano player playing bits of the opera "Carmen" (most noticeably, the Toreador Song).The plot mostly follows the experiences of a (crazy?) woman who may or may not have committed a certain recent crime, but did kill when younger.Oh, and there's a very long scene of a chubby gentleman eating chicken for what seems like several minutes and making his face all nice and shiny with grease.It is advisable that, unless you want to break into giggling fits, that you watch this the FIRST time with all the sound OFF.
(I ask that because hands don't really move hours after they've been removed, DO they?) The most interesting scene is where a wave comes over her and the bits of water look like human fingers going over her (which is shown a few times at the beginning, and a couple of times near the end) which seems to relate to the hand that was removed during the crime.It also seems that the director has a hatred for people who like jazz by making them all look like confused and unstable buffoons.
The atmosphere this film breathes feels like David Lynch's Eraserhead avant-la-lettre,  and I wouldn't be surprised if he found some of his inspiration and enthusiasm in Dementia.
'Dementia' is experimental horror film with elements of film noir and expressionist cinema.
Also known as 'Daughter of Horror' but that version includes narration by Ed McMahon.
I personally prefer the original one without it as the narration gives the film slightly Ed Wood vibe.
'Dementia' is not classical horror/slasher/exploitation flick, but it is a wonderful nightmarish trip into the paranoid (and perhaps, guilt ridden) mind of a lonely woman (Adrienne Barrett).
I do believe that a guilty conscious would produce nightmares and maybe even some hallucinations, those that do not feel guilt for their crimes could never experience this.It's kinda a throwback to the era of Silent Films...
The original sound track is brilliant, with music that was composed by George Antheil, an American avant-garde composer who lived from 1900 to 1959.Then some knuckleheads bought the rights to the film and decided it needed some histrionic narration thrown in here and there.
I had never heard of this film before I saw it being shown in a theater in The Blob (1958) whereupon I became interested in seeing this movie, I saw the original version without the voice over which I have read is pretty bad.
The silent version is an absolute must see for fans of silent/horror/noir films.This movie is like the recording of a nightmare; I have never before seen anything like it, and I doubt if I will in the future.
I stayed up to watch it because I have a soft spot for these kinds of pictures: Low budget campy productions with brief flashes of style and genius.Daughter of Horror is a great surprise.
Perhaps that was the point of the whole thing;because there isn't any dialog and the story,well hey the movie is called Daughter of Horror!
Equating madness with evil, Parker follows a disturbed young woman (armed with a switchblade) around Los Angeles at night, where beatniks and goons paw at her while a police detective--who looks just like the woman's dead father--beats a wino to death in front of her.
Alternate version "Daughter of Horror" is narrated by Ed McMahon as Madness incarnate, though the theme of insanity is not treated as a mental illness; instead, it's something a person stumbles into, and then frantically attempts to escape from.
Skip all the subjective "this is a great film" reviews and read the IMDB trailer or the back the KINO videobox (which includes both versions of this flick) which I'll paraphrase: "To the tune of sci-fi score by George Antheil, the camera goes on a sleepwalk through B-Movie hell, all photographed by Will Thompson (who did 'Plan 9 from outer space' & 'Maniac')." You don't know whether to laugh AT the film or WITH it.
Along the way, she goes out with a fat guy who looks like he could be Orson Welles' brother and he later takes a header off a building in one of the only interesting moments in the movie.This is a strange little film that is very cheaply made--and it sure shows.
Then I caught the film itself via the Internet and liked it – albeit watched on a very tiny screen; however, it took me a number of years to purchase the "Special Edition" disc and only managed to re-acquaint myself with the movie in time for this Halloween marathon.
DEMENTIA is not your typical horror film – a succession of nightmarish visuals blending noir, psychology, exploitation and outright surrealism (in fact, some of the images here admirably evoked that notorious Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali collaboration UN CHIEN ANDALOU [1929]!); equally notable, though, is its depiction of the current jazz/beatnik scene highlighted by George Antheil's nerve-jangling score.
At just under an hour runtime- and with practically no dialogue- this mostly silent, noirish, horror-thriller is beautifully shot- and has more "gore" (a term used lightly here) than you'd expect to see in a film made in the 50's.In it, we follow a young woman out on the prowl for vengeance.
But the narration, and guilt trip she is sent on, kind of throw this into question- making the whole thing seem more like it was meant to be a propaganda piece, teaching the misogynistic patriarchy about the dangers of raising a young feminist-minded daughter.
Dementia is a relatively short (originally running at 61 minutes, but cut to 56) noirish mood piece that begins and ends with the camera slowing zooming into the hotel room window of a damaged woman, the Gamin (meaning street urchin - played by director John Parker's secretary Adrienne Barrett).
These elements, including some very expressionistic acting styles, has led to the film being often compared to Robert Weine's silent masterpiece, Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari (1920), and whilst Dementia is certainly a competent little shocker, and has some visual flares of insanity, it doesn't really hold up against the German predecessor.
An antidote to the predominant film style of the time, which falsely portrays the Eisenhower-era complete with the technicolor façade With a cyclical narrative, the Gamin finds herself in the same hotel room, waking from a possible nightmare at the end of the film, leaving the mystery of her true identity and a questioning of her level of insanity: Are these visions and city excursions simply a trip through her almost-linear nightmare?
Not many viewers know the name or content of the scary picture the movie audience is watching, except that the title Daughter of Horror appears on the theatre marquee.
It exists in two versions; the Daughter of Horror version is better known in its 1957 re-release, with the narration by Ed McMahon added to the original silent 1953 version known as Dementia.
The performance by non-professional actress Adrienne Barrett is amazing( she was supposed to have been John Parker's secretary ,and told him of a dream she had had, which then became the basis for the screenplay).The whole movie isn't much more than an hour, and has a sort of Twilight Zone crossed with film noir feeling about it.
Utterly bizarre film, whose reputation is known in the annals of 'weird cinema', veritably a silent film, with rib-tickling narration from none other than Ed McMahon(!)has a mute woman(Adrienne Barrett) we follow during a dark journey in a city, as she encounters possible danger and dementia in equal doses.
What I think works for DEMENTIA/DAUGHTER OF HORROR is the way director John Parker presents it as off, an odd atmosphere where nothing seems quite right.
I watched the DAUGHTER OF HORROR version, but I enjoyed McMahon's narration myself because I think it gives the film a oddball charm.
I am completely overwhelmed by how mesmerised I was by this film which I saw in its re-release edition, "Daughter of Horror".
Surrounding her are very unsympathetic; a drunken abusive father, a tramp of a mother, skid row drunks and ultimately a fat wealthy man so gross and so gluttonous that the smirks and disgust that come from Bartlett are riveting with no dialogue and only an occasional shriek of laughter that can best be described as nefarious.The only actor recognizable in this film is Angelo Rossito (ironically of "Freaks") in a bit part as the newspaper seller.
another highlight of the movie is the musical score, jazzy and haunting, yet sinister at the same time because it shows the desperation of these skid-row archetypes attempting to have fun but going nowhere other than a dark abyss.Then, there's the question of how to classify this film.
This surreal horror film was a haunting masterpiece..
Incorporating elements of the avant-grade expressionism with Hollywood film noir, this exploitation film has everything you can wish for, in a smart horror movie.
Directed by John Parker, an aspiring filmmaker, Dementia was originally supposed to be a 10 minute short film; something that Parker could maybe use as a resume piece.
Dementia was also full of classic film noir elements, such as deceitful characters, murder, guilt, horror and inner demons, all mixed into one nightmarish watch.
The movie tells the story of a nocturnal murderous prowling of a young woman (Adrienne Barrett) haunted by homicidal guilt.
While, tame, compare to today's horror films, I can understand why the movie would receive a scant distribution, when it came out.
Whatever, was the reason, the movie had to be cut to fit in the film standards of the time.
Since the original, had no spoken dialogue, the producers felt like, the story might be, too hard to follow, so in Daughter of Horror, they added a wildly arch, throaty narration by then, unknown, voice-actor, Ed McMahon.
***SPOILERS*** Interesting movie about madness and murder that took some two years to be released here in the USA because of the graphic, which was trimmed down, violence in it.Gamine, Adrienne Barrett, has been suffering guilt feeling since both her parents Mom & Pop, Lucille Rowland & Ben Roseman, died tragically when she was a little girl.
"Dementia" is a hopelessly flawed and cheesy movie that hasn't aged well at all, but it is also an interesting and ambitious experiment in film noir and impressionism and fantasy...and I liked it.Oddly, the film it reminded me most of was "Hands Of A Stranger" - partially because it seemed to be the anti-matter opposite of that screen play (in which people NEVER STOP TALKING FOR AN INSTANT), but also because the art direction and set design constantly get in the way of what little plot there is and draw way too much attention to themselves.I saw the "silent" version of this film without the narration, and I will admit that the dialog and narration aren't needed - so heavy handed and symbol-laden are the visuals (and the soundtrack) that words aren't needed to know what's going on.
Daughter of Horror has low-budget, but creatively noir cinematography and a wonderful scene at a jazz club at the end.
Daughter of Horror is truly avant-garde in the way it looks ahead to both the underground films of the sixties as well as the feminist movement.