Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
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Dementia was released in 1955. It was filmed in black and white and there is not a single line of dialogue in the entire film. The strange thing is that the film works very well without it and you migtht be relieved to learn that there are none of those annoying storyboards either. If you have watched andy really old films like the 1922 Nosferatu you will know the kind of thing I mean. The closest thing to a storyboard in this film is when a sheet of windswept newspaper has a headline about stabbings in the area. Dementia was re-released under the title Daughter of Horror and with the addition of a narration. To be honest, I find there is little benefit gained from the added narration. The narrator does a little speech at the beginning of the film and turns up now again too add his two penneth worth to things, but to my mind the film can stand on its own two legs without any such help. In its most basic Dementia is the story of a mad woman who wakes from a sleep troubled by strange nightmares. Once awake the troubled young woman takes a switchblade from out of her chest of drawers -- it's a real pig-sticker too -- and then wanders out into the nighttime streets of skid-row. The woman runs into a pimp and then spends the evening with the rich and rather obnoxious guy that the pimp pimps his stuff for. He is a real pig of a guy and there is one scene, where he sits feeding his face with chicken, that is awe-inspiringly disgusting to watch (and I'm normally quite partial to chicken too). The evening does not end, perhaps, as well as the-piggy-one would have liked, but I don't think that too many viewers will have a lot of sympathy for him. There are also some rather surreal flashback sequences where the young woman's mind is carried back to her childhood. Ma and pa were, it would seem, not exactly role-model parents. At times, as I watched the film,
the woman
seemed to look as if she were confused about where she was and what was
happening, then later she appeared to change entirely, as if different
sides of a split personality were tuning in and out. If you should
decide to watch the film -- it runs for less than an hour and is
certainly worth watching -- you might find that by the end of it you
are wondering just how much of the woman's adventure was real and how
much was in her head. Perhaps even if she left the hotel room at all. I
certainly wondered all of these things. How much was in her head?
Perhaps this is exactly what the character asked
herself every day of her life. This is a strange film about a
strange woman's even stranger life and it really is pretty good, but
don't take my word for it watch it and find out for yourself. Scroll down the page to watch the movie (Donwload link below the player) Cast Adrienne Barrett ...
The
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