The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Boing Boing links to a free, downloadable version of the first ‘proper’ film by a man who went on to become one of the most famous directors of the 20th century, Francis Ford Coppola. Long before the heady cinematic heights of works like the Godfather and Apocalypse Now Coppola, like more than a few other now famous directors, got his break in the industry doing cheap’n'nasty genre work, in this case working for the legendary Roger Corman on the quickie horror flick Dementia 13. I actually watched this a few years back as part of a course on horror movies and its about as good as you might expect – shadows of the mike boom and camera appear in shot, it jumps time sequences, the acting is appalling…

Basically all the bad things you might expect for an early 60s exploitaiton, grindhouse quickie are present and its hard to look at this and think the man who made a couple of the films which appear on almost every critic’s list of top 100 movies made this. On the other hand, as I said, these sorts of flicks were often the place future great names would get their first (often stumbling) start in the movie industry, so we shouldn’t rubbish them altogether (I like to remind cine-snobs that more than a few currently revered auteurs started out ‘slumming’ in low-budget genre flicks). And besides, I’m sure more than a few of you are like me and actually take a perverse delight in deliberately watching the worst horror movies (heck, its why I still love wallowing in a Corman or Troma production to this day, they are so bad they are brilliant), and since its free why not?!? The Internet Archive has the whole film here. And while you’re there, have a look at some other interesting gems on the Archive, including a whole parcel of animation shorts to browse, from segments of old Betty Boop cartoons to SIGGRAPH computer animated shorts.