I watched Daughter of Horror, not the original version called Dementia. Of course the newer version has a voice over by Ed McMahon of Star search/Johnny Carson fame. Dementia had no voice over.

Neither film had dialog. The only thing you heard was the music of George Antheil. You watched as the faces of the actors gave the story. A woman (Adrienne Barrett) possessed by madness; the daughter of a philandering mother and a drunken father who murdered her, even as she murdered her father.

It was Luis Buñuel and Orson Welles throughout. Even the character of the rich man (Bruno VeSota) was channeling Orson Welles.

It is a bohemian rhapsody wrapped in madness. A strange but compelling film.

I am completely overwhelmed by how mesmerised I was by this film which I saw in its re-release edition, "Daughter of Horror". It is an artistic triumph, one made on the scraps of imagination that only one person could possibly hope to muster in their own mind. It is a story of desperation, of a dark society that can only be witnessed on the streets of big cities late at night in the most desolate of areas. This is a film without sentiment, with the leading character (Adrienne Barrett) in a desperate state of shock as she walks through the sands of time with the memories of her life and faces her latest act of darkness. Surrounding her are very unsympathetic characters; a drunken abusive father, a tramp of a mother, skid row drunks and ultimately a fat wealthy man so gross and so gluttonous that the smirks and disgust that come from Bartlett are riveting with no dialogue and only an occasional shriek of laughter that can best be described as nefarious.

The only actor recognizable in this film is Angelo Rossito (ironically of "Freaks") in a bit part as the newspaper seller. the writer even creates a character for the newspaper which flies around with the headline "mysterious stabbing" haunting Bartlett at every turn. The point of view a narrative in which this is told gives the fewer the opportunity to decide whether or not this is taking place with inside the heroines mind, in the past or present or possibly even the future. She is hard looking and close-ups on her face reveal years of male abuse. But there is an occasional gleam in her eye of both sadness and the desire to once again be unhardened.

The photography and art direction are superb, amazing for a film made on a dime. As Barrett looks through her past, all of those scenes are set in the cemetery where the gravestones of her parents are simply listed as "mother" and "father". if you thought the dream sequence in "Fiddler on the Roof" was eerie, that ain't nothing compared to this sequence. Another highlight of the movie is the musical score, jazzy and haunting, yet sinister at the same time because it shows the desperation of these skid-row archetypes attempting to have fun but going nowhere other than a dark abyss.

Then, there's the question of how to classify this film. Is it a horror film, the genre insinuated by its re-release title? Is it a film noir in the style of the later "Angel's Flight" (1965)? Should this really be classified as an exploitation film? After watching it, I believe the answer to all three questions is a definitive yes. It is a film that needs to be shown in advanced college film classes where more mature minds can appreciate the stylistic intentions of the creator. In reflection of it as a whole, I see this as a demented, nightmarish retread of the Richard Rodgers ballet "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" where the seediness of the situation is accelerated one hundred times.

The movie is about a day in the life of a woman who is going insane. To show that she is mentally ill, she overacts a lot and the narrator tells us she's "going mad". Along the way, she goes out with a fat guy who looks like he could be Orson Welles' brother and he later takes a header off a building in one of the only interesting moments in the movie.

This is a strange little film that is very cheaply made--and it sure shows. The film was shot without sound (probably using 8mm or some other cheap type of film) and had some sound effects and an overbearing narration added later. In fact, the narration was the most obtrusive and unintentionally hilarious I have ever heard and it is said in such a silly and over-the-top manner you'd just have to hear it to believe it. As a result of these cost-cutting actions, it's not surprising that the film is bad, though the idea of trying to make this sort of film was pretty original. Plus, it's VERY hard to make it through the entire film.