Greetings light readers, welcome to a different installment of the Sunday Morning Film. At this time it’s an experimental horror movie from the Fifties: Daughter of Horror a.okay.a Dementia.
Damaged Pencil says:
Fifty years on, Daughter of Horror (or, Dementia) is for me the granddaddy (or is that grandmother?) of indie horror. This movie represents what unbiased actually stands for: reshaping current kinds into one thing wholly distinctive, and innovation with one’s restricted sources. Its story is stuffed with visceral horror, a chiaroscuro canvas out of movie noir, and a fragmented dream-like construction owing extra to underground experimental movies than the rest in American narrative cinema. If you happen to can think about a wedding of B-movie horror directed by Fritz Lang and Maya Deren, then one will get a way of this movie’s distinctive really feel.
The Nitrate Diva says:
Directed by the obscure John Parker and written by Z-grade producer/director Bruno Ve Sota (though there’s some debate as to who actually deserves creative credit score), this oily, shoestring-cheap horror-noir accommodates not one line of dialogue. Yep, we’re coping with a surprisingly contradictory silent movie with a soundtrack. Other than just a few diegetic sounds—necessities like sobs, screams, laughter, and gunshots—you principally hear a ghoulish atonal rating by modernist composer George Antheil, crammed with foreboding jazz and the occasional soprano wail.
LaLa Movie says:
For Daughter of Horror just isn’t a movie simply forgotten. No dialogue is spoken throughout its 54 minute working time, though, in contrast to the unique Dementia, we now have a melodramatic narration, chewed up and spat out by Ed McMahon, later to enter the American tv corridor of fame as Johnny Carson’s sidekick for 30 years of The Tonight Present. The narration was a sop to the censors, involved audiences wouldn’t be capable of fathom the onscreen occasions, and although McMahon provides a sure brutal giddiness to proceedings, pronouncements equivalent to “Let me present you the mattress of evil you sprang from!” and “Responsible! Mad with guilt and the devils who’ve taken possession of you,” typically detract from the movie’s critical intent.
My take: That is an odd little movie. It’s not an important movie, though I can see it’s allure for the horror aficionado who cares concerning the historical past of the style. A number of the scenes are a bit foolish in my estimation, just like the fats man sucking fried rooster off the bone accompanied by eerie music. The truth that it was censored says rather a lot about American tradition within the Fifties; at present it could be thought of completely innocent. It was initially launched as Dementia however the censors squashed it and two years later it was re-released as Daughter of Horror with a voice over by Ed McMahon to information the viewer via it’s maze of images.
Directed by: John Parker
Written by: John Parker (there may be some controversy as as to whether it was written by the producer (and fats man) Bruno Ve Sota)
Notable actors: Shorty Rogers
Plot (Spoilers!):
The film begins with a younger lady awakening from a nightmare in a seedy resort room. Wandering onto the road, she buys a newspaper headlined “Mysterious Stabbing”. Her smile signifies this implies one thing to her.
She wanders into an alley and is accosted by a drunk. The cops arrive and beat the drunk as she makes her escape. Subsequent a pimp approaches her and convinces her to get into the automobile of a rich man. Whereas she rides, she remembers murdering her father after he shot and killed her untrue mom.
The rich man provides her the tour of town’s evening life after which takes her to his luxurious condo. After consuming a wealthy meal, he makes his strikes on her. She stabs him with a switchblade and pushes him out of the window. Greedy wildly, he manages to tear the pendant off of her neck. She races out of the constructing to recuperate her jewellery. She finds the corpse but it surely has the pendant locked in a death-grip. She saws off the useless man’s hand to retrieve it.
She runs via town streets, gawked at by nameless bystanders. The cops reappear and a detective together with her father’s face follows her with a highlight. She runs across the nook and dumps the hand right into a flower ladies basket.
The pimp has returned and now pulls her right into a wild jazz membership. The cop enters behind them. The gang begins to snigger at her maniacally and the corpse of the rich man seems within the window and factors to her along with his stump.
The girl collapses and passes out. She awakens again in her tawdry resort room. Dazed, she opens her prime dresser drawer solely to find the bloody hand.
