‘Dementia’: A Feverish, Tortured Night on Skid Row

Adrienne Barrett, 'Dementia' (1955).

“Dementia” (1955) has many of film noir’s hallmarks: a dingy hotel room with a well-worn electric sign outside that nervously flashes off and on, shady characters prowling skid row’s streets and a posh-looking fat man who glides around town in the back seat of his limo. And of course tobacco smoke, deep, dark shadows and raking light that makes everything look sinister. 

Despite its noir earmarks, “Dementia” is mostly a psychologically driven horror film chock full of surrealistic imagery — equal parts Luis Buñuel, Raymond Chandler and John Carpenter with a heavy dollop of Sigmund Freud tossed in for good measure.  

In it, a tormented woman’s restless sleep is interrupted by paranoid delusions. She roams the streets in a business suit, looking like a Sarah Lawrence grad, except she brandishes a switchblade and as we soon discover, isn’t afraid to use it. 

She visits her parents’ graves in the dead of night and relives the violence she experienced as a child at the hands of her father and her mother’s indifference to it. Later, she’s waylaid by a pimp who attempts to put her to work for him, is chased by the cops and roughed up by some others. It’s a trippy exploration of madness as well as the ever-present threat of violence and sexual abuse that women endure. Probably “Torment” would have been a more fitting title for it.

In a Silent Way
Oh, and the film has no spoken dialog at all, just some written messages that fit into the story. One online version that I watched, titled merely “Dementia,” has a wheezing, growling electric guitar soundtrack that must have been dubbed in long after the film’s initial release — best to avoid that one. 

John Parker, the film’s writer, producer and director originally intended “Dementia” to be a short but revamped it into a feature length production. 

Bruno VeSota, Adrienne Barrett, 'Dementia'

The story is based on his secretary Adrienne Barrett’s dream, and he cast her to play the lead role. Viewing it today it’s hard to understand why the New York State Film Board banned it in 1953, but it was finally released two years later. Producer Jack H. Harris acquired it and re-released it in 1957 as “Daughter of Horror,” adding a bit of voice over narration. 

The soundtrack has the kind of swooning melodies you'd expect in a schlock horror film — music by George Antheil, orchestration by Ernest Gold, with The Giants, Shorty Rogers, and vocals by Marni Nixon. 

Also on the hokey side is the narration performed by Ed McMahon prior to his stint on “The Tonight Show.” It's over the top, but adds needed clarity to the story. 

If you don’t like low-budget, independent art films, “Dementia” is probably not your cup of tea. It’s more akin to “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” than to traditional noir studio productions like “Double Indemnity” and “Out of the Past.” 

But on the plus side it does possess a certain saturnine visual poetry that is heavy on symbolism, charmingly corny, and makes the most of dark, shadowy landscapes where danger lurks around every corner — the stuff that always lures us in.