Dementia aka (Daughter Of Horror) (1955) Beat Noir Nightmare

Directed and written by John Parker (uncredited).

Produced by John Parker, Ben Roseman, and Bruno Ve Sota. The cinematography by was by William C. Thompson. Music by George Antheil an avant-garde composer, and Shorty Rogers and his jazz band the Giants in the nightclub sequence.

The film stars Adrienne Barrett, Bruno VeSota as Bruno Ve Sota (The Long Wait (1954), Female Jungle (1956), Night Tide (1961)), Richard Barron (Union Station (1950), The Hoodlum (1951)), Lucille Rowland, Ben Roseman (Night Tide (1961)), Angelo Rossitto (Freaks (1932), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)) and filmed in Venice, California in 1953.

The original production had no dialog. It used music and sound effects. The avant-garde score featured soprano Marni Nixon (who provided voice dubs for actresses in many Hollywood productions).

Night. Venice, California. A neighborhood in Noirsville section of town. A flea bag residence hotel. A flop. We zoom to a window. The bedroom inside is lit by a flashing Marquee letter sign that spells "Hotel." 

A young woman laying on a bed asleep. We see a Dreamscape of waves rolling to a beach where a figure walks in the sand towards us and then seems to be swallowed up by a breaker. The woman on the bed awakes, turns on a lamp and sits up in bed.

Adrienne Barrett as the woman

She lights a cigarette, gets off the bed and walks across the room to a floor lamp turning it on. There she studies her reflection. 

She suddenly flicks open a switchblade. She likes what she sees.

She goes out into the hall and then down a stairway where she passes a little kid playing on the steps. At the next landing down she encounters a battered woman showing her bruises to a cop while her significant other looks on sheepishly, and watching the proceedings the nextdoor neighbor who probably reported the fight.

At the next landing down she encounters a battered woman showing her bruises to a cop while her significant other looks on sheepishly, and watching the proceedings the nextdoor neighbor who probably reported the fight.

The woman stops to listen out of sight for a moment and then continues past and we cut to her coming out of the hotel entrance below a neon sign announcing APARTMENTS.

She walks down the covered arcade. When she reaches the corner at the end of the arcade she meets a dwarf selling newspapers. 

                                            Angelo Rossitto as newsboy

The dwarf smiles and hands her a paper. The headline reads "Mysterious Stabbing." The woman smirks as she reads it.

She then turns, tosses the paper down and walks away and we watch as she negotiates various back alleys. 

She eventually gets accosted by a wino who wants her to take a drink.

Before things get out of hand, a prowl car pulls across the end of the alley and shines a light

The cop hops out and starts beating on the wino while the woman watches and laughs.

Ben Roseman as Cop / Father

The woman runs from this, back out to the street, and is soon approached by a smooth talking sharp dressed slimeball who puts his arm out to a column, blocking her path, and he starts chatting her up. He looks her up and down appraisingly, and nods his head, liking what he sees. 

Richard Barron as The Slimeball

He grabs her by the arm and walks her down the street stopping at a flower vendor where he pulls out a roll of cash and flashes it to the woman as he purchases a carnation. He puts it in his lapel.  She looks impressed and he looks like he tells her there's more where this came from.  They continue to walk and he steers her to roadside corner.

He grabs her by the arm and walks her down the street stopping at a flower vendor where he pulls out a roll of cash and flashes it to the woman as he purchases a carnation. He puts it in his lapel.  She looks impressed and he looks like he tells her there's more where this came from. They continue to walk and he steers her to roadside corner. 

At the corner there's a nice sequence where, while they are having a smoke, the wind blows the same newspaper she discarded earlier up to catch her feet. We again read the "Mysterious Stabbing" headline. She kicks the newspaper from her feet and it floats under the front wheel of a 1951 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 chauffeured limousine. 

In the back seat of the Fleetwood is a rich fat cat smoking a cigar. The slimeball is basically fuctioning as his pimp. The slimeball slides in the open door and must tell the fat cat that he's got a hot tomato for him, so the fat cat invites her in the Fleetwood.

Bruno VeSota as the Fat Cat 

Hot tomato or tough cookie?

The Woman and the Fat Cat do the various nightclubs in town. They end up at a floor show where the fat cat get aroused by a dancer wiggling away on the stage. The woman notices and gets a bit jealous.

The back in the limo and wexperiences a a hile riding through the night the woman sees a Twilight Zone=ish cone and then experiences a Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" style flashback of a ghost holding a lantern beside gravestones. 

The Flashback

The first headstone is of her drunken abusive father, the second is of  her floozy mother. She relives her father beating on herself and then him shooting her cheating mother. 

Lucille Rowland (the Mother)

When the Fat Cat takes the woman up to his high rise she expects him to make a move. Fat cat however is more interested in eating again than in sex. A butler brings him a roast chicken dinner which he eats grotesquely with his face. Dripping grease from his face and fingers he approaches the woman with a money roll in one hand.  She is standing by an open window. It goes Noirsville when as he tries to  grab for her she stabs him with her stiletto and pushes him out the window, as he falls he rips a pendant from her neck.

Noirsville

The roots of these nightmare films can be traced back to Un Chien Andalou (1929). Could fit on a double bill with The Thief (1952) another film without dialog.

The film is an entertaining prelude of the supernatural, thriller, experimental, noir-ish explosion to come i.e.,  Vertigo (1958), The Savage Eye (1960) Carnival Of Souls (1962) The Glass Cage (1964), and Seconds (1966), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1962), The Twilight Zone (1959–1964), and One Step Beyond (1959–1961).

Screencaps are from a new restored release. 7/10