Ronald Stein's creepy music and Paul Julian's uncanny title artwork (he's the director of the macabre animated short The Hangman) get Dementia 13 off to an appropriately eerie start. Perhaps some of the film's acting is on the weak side, as the cast is a blend of Irish pros mixed with Hollywood hopefuls and regulars from TV, A.I.P., and the Roger Corman stable. Top-billed WIlliam Campbell had the most experience as an MGM contract player, and was also the brother of R. Wright Campbell, a regular Corman writer. Actors Mary Mitchell and Bart Patton were married, and knew Coppola from UCLA's Theater Arts Department.

Corman uses his resources well. The large stone house representing the Haloran spread has all manner of atmospheric architecture and dank corridors to exploit for the film. Cinematographer Charles Hannawalt's camera work is excellent -- he was a key grip on many pictures but this is his only credit as Director of Photography. Coppola depicts a mystery killer creeping about without giving away the secret of his identity. His key horror scene, a gruesome axe slaying that comes out of nowhere, is a real keeper. The beautiful victim is dragged through the mud and grass on a dark, dank night. Although the film hasn't the body count of a giallo thriller, more mayhem is yet to come: producer Corman ordered some second-unit work by Jack Hill to up the body count. Coppola also delivers some mild sex thrills when Kane and Richard Halloran make out, including one scene in a hayloft right after their wedding. And what exotic horror attraction would be complete without at least one scene with the imperiled heroine wandering the dark mansion in a flimsy nightgown?

Mary Mitchel and the always malevolent Patrick Magee give standout performances, while Luana Anders gets several good moments perfecting her sly "I don't know where my husband is" act. Coppola adds stylized touches to a couple of flashbacks to the fatal childhood accident, approximating the eerie mood of The Innocents with diffusion filters placed over the camera lens. Coppola's dialogue scenes aren't dull and his scary moments deliver some impressive shocks. Dementia 13 is a feature debut to be proud of.

HD Cinema Classics' Blu-ray of Dementia 13 is a Combo Pack that also contains a standard DVD pressing of this title. Being a Filmgroup picture on which Roger Corman never bothered to register a copyright, the film fell into the public domain ages ago and the bargin bins presently overflow with bogus discs of the title with transfers that range from "so-so" to "why bother?" HD Cinema Classics' copy is the best I've seen the title, yet it's far from perfect. It's been restored in "spectacular High-Definition Blu-ray" and looks clean and stable, but is quite contrasty. Although by no means difficult to watch, blacks do clump up and light areas become blobs of white. A video restoration comparison shows that heavy image processing was used to neutralize many tiny horizontal scratches, dirt specks, etc., the trade-off being that the picture is always a bit less sharp than we expect a Blu-ray to be. The image is consistently attractive.

The box text saying that the film is "transferred from original 35mm elements" is accurate if you accept a projection print as a 'film element' -- the term is usually applied to pre-print material (assuming this really is a projection print and not a low-con positive printing element). I've been told where the original elements for both this feature and The Terror are held, and neither were accessed for these Blu-rays. But I must end by affirming that I haven't seen Dementia 13 on home video looking better than this Blu-ray. And the price can't be beat, either.

A frustrating Catch-22 comes into play when the actual original negative and printing elements of a public domain movie are owned by a studio. The studio will hesitate to put perfect video copies out there, because the Public Domain labels will just copy them and flood the market with product. This inferior P.D. product dilutes the demand for good copies, making a quality edition a bad business choice. Although it (hopefully) no longer happens, whole vaults of original 35mm negatives were junked in the 1950s after TV sales were made. We're lucky that studios don't throw these un-exploitable films away, as a waste of vault space.

HD Cinema Classics' disc has a slightly tubby audio track that is difficult to understand for a short patch of dialogue near the front of the film. The disc carries Spanish subtitles (only), an original trailer and a postcard reproduction of that unwholesome-looking original artwork. Who in 1963 would guess that Dementia 13 is a good horror thriller on the basis of that poster art?

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Dementia 13 Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Very Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: trailer, postcard, restoration comparison
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: April 25, 2011