John Parker wrote, produced, and directed this ambitious but relatively amateurish paean (one presumes) to silent German Expressionism. Equating madness with evil, Parker follows a disturbed young woman (armed with a switchblade) around Los Angeles at night, where beatniks and goons paw at her while a police detective--who looks just like the woman's dead father--beats a wino to death in front of her. Parker has one interesting shot early on, a double image of a girl running while a wave crashes behind her, which is then repeated at least twice. The filmmaker knows a great deal about visual composition and technique, but he doesn't do anything exciting with the wordless format and he's useless with his actors. In the lead, Adrienne Barrett is frequently exposed to ridicule; looking like one of the Bowery Boys in a skirt, Barrett alternately scowls and smirks in close-up, and is incapable of pulling off such dramatic scenes as crawling across the ground to retrieve her bulky necklace or getting all hot and bothered in an underground jazz club. Alternate version "Daughter of Horror" is narrated by Ed McMahon as Madness incarnate, though the theme of insanity is not treated as a mental illness; instead, it's something a person stumbles into, and then frantically attempts to escape from. Parker even tries for a twist ending, but it's really for naught. "Dementia" is demented in all the wrong ways. *1/2 from ****
Review of Dementia
