Good Intense-ions
Dementia
USA 1955 (possibly earlier)
Directed by John Parker
(or possibly Bruno VeSota)
BFI Blu Ray Zone B
Well now. Dementia is a strange film and reminds me of something I wrote myself when I was a teenager (which I tried to get shot three times and when it was finally shot and halfway through the edit, the videocassette tape was physically lost, quite literally fallen off the roof of a car... so a story fated never to be told).
Anyway, my woes aside, Dementia was not released when it was made because it was, from what I understand, scaring people and was just too surreal for the perceived public consumption. It was continually denied certification in the US and banned for a while in the UK as well, until a few screeings in the 1970s. I believe an interracial dance scene at a jazz club was also something censors were keen to deny people the right to see (with the legendary Shorty Rogers playing jazz in the sequence).
So, a black and white, surreal and noirish thriller with, I should add, no dialogue. There was another version a few years later, a bastardised version with cut footage (taking account that this original version is already only 56 minutes long), with a different score and added voice over dialogue, called Daughter Of Horror. This cut is also on the BFI Blu Ray but, out of respect for the original, uncompromised version, I have only watched the original, dialogue free version with a score by George Antheil... I might circle back to the other version at some later point because, at one time, it was better known and perhaps the memory of that led to this version being rediscovered. It’s the Daughter Of Horror version which is being watched by a bunch of teenagers in the original 1958 version of The Blob.
Adding to all the confusion, director John Parker is said to have ‘disappeared’ shortly after... or perhaps he never existed in the first place... although his secretary, Adrienne Barrett, plays the main protagonist in this, known as The Gamin. All of the characters have names like this, cyphers for their function, such as The Evil One, Mother, Father and, in the case of the actor who actually claims to have directed at least half of it, Bruno VeSota... The Rich Man.
And it’s an interesting film, for sure.There’s not a lot of plot and its a fairly abstract story but it does tell a tale, of sorts... and it certainly holds the attention. Antheil’s score features a prominent wordless voice and it sounds very much like a theremin or ondes martenot, specifically the theremin used in one of the two films this one strongly reminds me of... Spellbound. I can’t help but think that the director, whoever it was, was significantly influenced by the Salvador Dali dream sequence in this classic Hitchcock movie and also, very much so, by the score by Miklos Rosza. And, the other film it reminds me of is another Dali work, his co-creation with Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou. Not just in tone but also in specific moments, such as the importance and focus on a specific severed hand at a couple of points in the narrative (such as it is).
That story being about a half deranged woman who is living in a world where women seem to be used and abused by men and who ends up killing some specific men... both in her past and during the course of the events which are told as graveyard flashbacks to her childhood.
A few things of note... firstly two of the actors. Dwarf Angelo Rossitto, who is perhaps best known for his role in Tod Browning’s Freaks but also turns up in films by Al Adamson and the like, plays a newspaper seller... which is a profession he also fell back on in real life between acting jobs, from what I can make out. Another interesting and important name is an uncredited night club patron being played by, of all people, Aaron Spelling. Yep, the same Spelling who would become a giant TV mogul in the 1960s and beyond... and into the mid 2000s... you’ll see his name in lots of credits for shows such as Honey West, Starsky And Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, T J Hooker, Fantasy Island, Hart To Hart, Beverly Hills 90210 and oodles more.
One last thing... lets talk about the nature of censorship. Anyone watching this now will wonder why a film which has been given a 12 rating by the BBFC was once banned for many decades. Well, it’s interesting because there’s a scene where The Gamin is looking in a mirror and she pulls out a switchblade and, after popping the blade out, looks at it almost lovingly, obviously relishing the lethal potential in the blade while smiling to herself. This attitude, to me, is way more frightening and stronger than any gory death a child might stumble on in, say, a gruesome American slasher movie... but the kind of imagery in those are the things which garner them a stupidly high rating. I think little scenes like this make more of an indelible, psychological impact than any kind of strong graphic imagery so, yeah, you have to wonder just why any censorship other than both self-censorship or parental censorship are allowed to exist. It frightens me that censors can wield such power, especially if they let this movie (which, to be fair, features a severed hand) go out with a 12 rating. Preposterous.
All in all, though, I would say I really quite liked Dementia and think it would be a good one to programme for an all nighter of dark movies, for sure. I will definitely be watching this one again, at some point.
