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For over fifty years, Francis Ford Coppola has been a towering, and often controversial, figure in American Cinema. His filmography is one of the most legendary of all time and includes some of the greatest movies ever made like The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), and more. It also includes wild swings—One from the Heart (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)—which sometimes paid off, but sometimes did not. This year, his forty-year-in-the-making passion project Megalopolis finally hit screens for the general public after a festival run that provoked a mixed critical response to say the least. It is a gigantic movie made on a huge budget with vast, and sometimes impenetrable, ideas. His very first film, however, was a much more modest project, made on a minuscule budget, and…it was a horror movie.

Dementia 13 (1963) is very much a product of its time and circumstances, the time being the wave of psychological horror that arose in the wake of Psycho (1960) and the circumstances being the evolution of Roger Corman from director to producer. In the summer of 1962, Corman called upon a small group of friends, who were willing to work for minimal salaries and a trip to Europe, to serve as his crew on The Young Racers. Coppola was the “first assistant [director], grip mechanic, and soundman” on that picture according to Corman’s autobiography How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. Coppola notes that he also directed the second unit on the film. Coppola was clearly ambitious and aware of Corman’s tendency to reward hard work and tenacity. He is quoted in Corman’s book saying:

“We all knew that when Roger went to Europe or Hawaii of Puerto Rico for a picture that he always made a second picture with his own money. He asked me if I knew a good soundman for the European shoot and I said, ‘Gee, yeah, I do. I’ll do the sound.’ So I immediately got the Nagra [sound recording system] out of the closet at the office and went home to read the manual.”

The final race of the film was shot in England and Coppola and Menahem Golan (future president of Cannon films), who was also on the crew, began competing over which of them would make the second movie that Corman had decided to finance. Golan came up with an idea to be shot in Tel Aviv and Coppola one to be shot at Bray Studio in Dublin. “I liked Francis’s idea better,” Corman said but also noted, nearly thirty years later, that “Menahem still will not let me forget that I chose Francis over him.”

True to Corman form, Dementia 13 was made for a mere $30,000 (or $20,000 according to Coppola) which was a shoestring even at the time. By way of comparison, Psycho was made for $600,000 a mere three years before, which was also considered extremely low budget for any movie of the period. All things considered, Coppola was able to make remarkable use of these limited resources. His sense of framing and composition already hints at the promise of genius to come. He gets serviceable if not great performances out of his less experienced actors while guiding the veterans, like Patrick Magee, to levels of excellence rarely seen in exploitation films.

Great use is made of Bray’s manor house and the sprawling grounds, and the high contrast black and white photography brings a moodiness and sense of encroaching dread throughout its brief runtime. It also features one of the most shocking murders this side of the Shower Scene when the character Louise (Luana Anders) runs afoul of a maniac with an axe.

Because Dementia 13 is less seen than many of the films I have covered in this column, I do not want to divulge its surprises, and there are many, but will instead examine its influences and impact. Like most filmmakers of his generation, Coppola was and is a student of cinema, revering the old Hollywood masters like Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock as well as the international filmmakers that helped create and sustain the art form. The influence of these artists and their films is all over Dementia 13. The Psycho touchstones are the most obvious, but aspects of other Hitchcock films including Rebecca (1940), Spellbound (1945), and Vertigo (1958) also find their way into the film. Lady Haloran (Eithne Dunne) has a distinct Mrs. Danvers (of Rebecca) air about her, as in Spellbound there is a childhood trauma behind the story, and a mysterious doppelgänger of a deceased character à la Vertigo. Beyond the Hitchcock comparisons, students of classic film may also find references to Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter (1955), Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), and even Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939).

When Coppola presented his final cut to Corman, the producer felt it needed to be punched up for the usual audience that frequented the films of American International Pictures, which distributed Dementia 13. He wanted a bit more violence in the form of another axe murder which would also serve to lengthen the rather brief runtime of 68 minutes. Coppola did not want to change his film, so Corman hired frequent collaborator Jack Hill to write and direct new scenes. These ended up featuring a character named Simon (Carl Schanzer), a kind of gamekeeper of the grounds, who discovers what appears to be the body of the long-dead Haloran family daughter Kathleen before being decapitated by the axe murderer. The scene ends with his severed head rolling into the pond where Kathleen drowned six years before.

Even with these sequences, the film clocked in at only 75 minutes, so Corman and director Monte Hellman filmed a prologue featuring a psychologist to help viewers assess whether or not they were sane enough to view the picture. When the rights to Dementia 13 returned to Coppola, he had it restored to his original version which was released on Blu-ray in 2021. This version excises the Simon sequences and includes the prologue only as an extra feature. The film was a modest hit for a first feature and opened doors for Coppola’s early work, including the quirky You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), his first big studio film (and something of a disaster) Finnian’s Rainbow (1968), the powerful personal film The Rain People (1969), and his Oscar-winning screenplay for Patton (1970) before finally proving his directing prowess to the masses with The Godfather (1972).

In the years since Dementia 13, Coppola has returned to horror on several occasions. While still working with Corman, he directed a day or two on the legendary train wreck that is The Terror (1963), a film that deserves a deep dive all its own. His next exploration of horror does not easily fit into any category, but Apocalypse Now explores and meditates upon the true nature of horror in ways that few films of any genre ever have. Though Bram Stoker’s Dracula divided critics and audiences back in 1992, it has grown into a modern classic of the vampire film, particularly those of the gothic variety. He followed up the success of that film by producing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh, the most lavish telling of that tale to date. In the latter years of his career, as the budgets allotted to him became more modest after a string of box office disappointments, and his films became more personal and independent, Coppola released another vampire film, Twixt (2011), which he also recently recut and released on Blu-ray as B’twixt Now and Sunrise.

Though Francis Ford Coppola’s fortunes have varied wildly over the years, at least in terms of box office success and critical praise, he has always been a filmmaker willing to take risks, occasionally even wild swings. Sometimes, as with The Godfather and in a different way Apocalypse Now, they connected and gave him opportunities unparalleled in the history of cinema. Other times, as with One from the Heart, they lead to financial ruin and creative bankruptcy. After that film, which is a wonderful film in my opinion, Coppola was seen as a loose cannon by some and a pariah by others, and irresponsible by most (I highly recommend Sam Wasson’s book The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story for a much more detailed examination of all this).

Throughout all the highs and lows however, the big ideas and the filmmaking prowess of the man are impossible to ignore. Whether Megalopolis is a certified triumph of an unmitigated disaster is in many ways beside the point. With his most personal, philosophical, and impenetrable films, Coppola displays the soul of an artist making art that challenges and provokes, but also sometimes confounds and divides. In an era of no-risk, four quadrant, remake and franchise heavy filmmaking, it is refreshing to find an artist be so daring, even putting his money where his mouth is by selling off a portion of his lucrative wine business to fund the risky venture himself. By doing so he proves that in order for art to be art it cannot, it must not, be safe.

Even with the humble beginning that is Dementia 13, a film made on a budget 4,000 times smaller than Megalopolis, that sense of personal, even dangerous, artistry is already on display. Though it plays to the exploitation crowd for practical reasons, the film is far more interested in the dynamics of the Haloran family than the solution to its mystery. It digs into the psychology, motivations, and desires of each member in compelling ways that reveal the motivations, not only of the characters, but also those that underly human nature from time immemorial. These kinds of philosophical and familial undercurrents flow through Coppola’s work from these humble beginnings and throughout all the highs and lows that follow.

Though usually overshadowed by the big titles of Coppola’s filmography, which is no surprise considering the monumental films that are part of it, Dementia 13 is well worth rediscovery and a fascinating origin story for a cinematic giant.