Triskaidekaphilia: 'Dementia 13' (2017)

On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.

The only reason that anyone pays attention to the original 1963 Dementia 13 is that it's one of Francis Ford Coppola's earliest films; otherwise, the typically rushed and incoherent Roger Corman production would likely be forgotten, or known only to hardcore B-movie connoisseurs. Even with the Coppola connection, it's still a bit of a stretch to think that the movie has such a recognizable brand name that it's worth remaking; I suspect that a large part of the reason that producers latched onto the idea is that the original has fallen into the public domain, and thus can be remade by anyone without bothering with licensing.

"The source material is free" is, of course, not a great reason for making a movie, and Richard LeMay's 2017 remake of Dementia 13 never really offers up a better one. It's not like the original story is brilliant, anyway: Like most early (and later) Corman movies, it was produced in a mad rush, and Coppola's screenplay is more or less nonsensical, made even more so by mandated reshoots that were added at Corman's insistence by another director. The best thing about Coppola's film is its eerie atmosphere, something that comes from filmmaking technique and not from narrative. LeMay is no Coppola, to put it mildly, and screenwriters Dan DeFilippo and Justin Smith add a bunch of extra material to the original story, making the incoherent narrative even more of a mess.

It still takes place at a remote estate, where a woman who's married into an eccentric family tries to wrangle an inheritance following her husband's sudden death. Here, though, that woman is a con artist who straight-up murdered her husband, and the filmmakers add a group of home invaders and an actual ghost to the original story of family secrets and a mysterious killer. Although the story is streamlined in certain ways thanks to what was probably a more straightforward production process, it's still convoluted and ultimately pretty meaningless, and without the kind of unsettling style that Coppola brought to his film, it's just another cheap straight-to-VOD quickie. The acting is passable at best, the scares are rote, and the characters are pretty much all unlikable, which means that the primary entertainment value is in waiting for them to die.

Only the location looks impressive, a sprawling estate that conveys the isolation and eccentricity of the central family. LeMay makes the most of it, shooting all over the grounds and in the surrounding woods, relying on the creepy emptiness of the scenery to stand in for any narrative thrills. In a way, this movie is perfectly in keeping with the original, which was an opportunistic add-on using money left over from a previous Corman movie, churned out on a tiny budget as quickly as possible, to fill out drive-in double bills. The glut of movies on VOD and streaming services are the modern equivalent of that, and while it's unlikely that LeMay will become the next Coppola, he's managed to capture the spirit of one of the legendary filmmaker's early efforts.