Dementia is a 1955 American black-and-white experimental horror film produced, written, and directed by John Parker, and starring Adrienne Barrett and Bruno Ve Sota. The film, which contains no dialogue, follows a young woman's nightmarish experiences during a single night in Los Angeles's skid row. Stylistically, it incorporates elements of horror, film noir, and expressionist film.
Dementia was conceived as a short film by writer-director Parker and was based on a dream relayed to him by his secretary, Barrett. He cast Barrett in the film, along with Ve Sota, and ultimately decided to expand it into a longer feature. The film received a troubled release, being banned in 1953 by the New York State Film Board before finally being released in December 1955. It was later acquired by Jack H. Harris, who edited it and incorporated voice over narration by Ed McMahon before re-releasing it in 1957 under the alternate title Daughter of Horror.
Plot[]
A young woman awakens from a nightmare in a run down hotel. She leaves the lodging and wanders into the night. She encounters a dwarf hawking newspapers with the bold headline "Mysterious stabbing". She smiles enigmatically and quickly walks on. In a dark alley, a wino approaches and grabs her. A policeman rescues her and beats up the drunk as she leaves. Along her way, a pimp, with a pencil-thin mustache, and sharply dressed, approaches her, buys her a flower from a flower girl's basket, and cajoles her into escorting a porcine rich man in a chauffeured limousine. As they cruise through the night, she thinks back to her tragic youth and her abusive father. She had stabbed him to death with a switchblade after he shot and killed her unfaithful mother.
The rich man takes her to bars and nightclubs and finally to his elegant high-rise apartment. He first ignores her as he feasts on an extensive meal. She tempts him, and when he advances on her, she stabs him with her switchblade, pushing the dying man out of an upper story window. As he topples, he grabs the pendant around her neck, and it snaps off in his hand as he plummets. The crazed woman races out of the building onto the street and confronts the man's corpse. The dead man's hand still grasps her pendant in an iron grip, forcing her to saw it off with her knife. She flees while holding it, as she imagines faceless bystanders watching her impassively. Again, a patrol car appears. The same cop, with a strange frozen smile, tracks her with a spotlight as she runs; he appears to have her father's face. She ducks around a corner, hiding the severed hand in the flower girl's basket.
As she runs down an alley, the pimp suddenly grabs her from inside a doorway and drags her into a club; an enthusiastic audience watches a jazz band playing. The smiling policeman enters, as the corpse of the rich man lies at the window pointing to his murderer with his bloody stump. The crowd moves forward, encircling her, laughing maniacally. She passes out, reawakening alone in her dingy hotel room. She goes to the mirror on the dresser and searches for clues. In the top drawer, she discovers her broken pendant, clutched in the fingers of a severed hand closed over it.