It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

And speaking, as we were the other week, of once notorious film composer George Antheil, a/k/a The Bad Boy of Modern Music, I was just looking at his credits and noticed, to my surprise, that he had scored a genuine cinematic curiosity. It's a film I had seen only once, years ago in a college film course (I'd tell you when, but I don't want to bring the Spanish American War into this), but which has haunted my dreams ever since -- the 1955 art house/exploitation horror classic Dementia.

Needless to say, I immediately headed over to Amazon, where I found, also to my surprise, that it's available in a spiffy DVD version from the fine folks at Kino on Video.

What's it about? Consider this synopsis, from the video box:

An entirely unique and utterly bizarre rediscovery, writer/director John J. Parker's Dementia is a 1950s-style foray into the mind of psycho-sexual madness. Set entirely in a nocturnal twilight zone that blends dream imagery with the cinematic stylings of film noir, Dementia follows the tormented existence of a "Gamin" (Adrienne Barrett) haunted by the horrors of her youth, which transformed her into a stiletto-wielding, man-hating beatnik [emphasis mine]. It's a surreal sleepwalk through B-movie hell, populated by prostitutes, pimps and would-be molesters, all photographed by William Thompson (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Maniac, Glen or Glenda?).

And here's a brief video excerpt to give you an idea of just how eerie and disturbing the whole thing actually is....

Incidentally, the dwarf with the newspaper in the clip is Angelo Rossitto, who parlayed his lack of stature (he was 2'11'') into roles in scores of films, from Tod Browning's Freaks in 1932 to Mel Gibson's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. The fat guy with the mustache is Bruno Ve Sota, a poor man's Sydney Greenstreet/Orson Welles type familiar from scores of TV shows and B-movies out of the American International orbit, most notably Daddy-O, the Dick Contino vehicle memorably parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

It's worth noting -- and I didn't know this back in school -- that two years after Dementia's original release, the producers added a portentous narration (voiced by none other than Ed McMahon!), cut some of the controversial scenes, and changed the title to the more sensational Daughter Of Horror. For years, that was the only print available; it is also worth noting that a clip from that butchered version can be glimpsed in the original Steve McQueen sci-fi classic The Blob (it's what's playing at the movie theater the titular monster invades at the film's climax). In any case, the Kino DVD has both versions, re-mastered from the original 35mm negatives and looking great, and if you have any disposable income you should order a copy immediately.

Incidentally, I love that one of the adulatory blurbs on the Dementia box -- "It stirred my blood and purged my libido" -- is from none other than Preston Struges; the idea that the man who created John L. Sullivan, uplifting auteur of the original O Brother, Where Art Thou?, was a fan of this sleazoid walk on the weird side is just too deliciously ironic for words.