Luana Anders in the original Dementia 13.
Live cinema offers a fascinating deconstruction of the film-maker's art. The usually seamless synthesis of sound and image is disrupted as the film score is performed live, dialogue is spoken into microphones and sound effects are created before your eyes by a foley artist.
The live performances create an ironic
distancing, but what is surprising is that even as the elements of film are dissected and laid out like items on an operating table, the illusion reasserts itself and the audience is swept away by the power of the story.
The method also breathes new life into neglected cult classics and the choice of Dementia 13 is a smart move. The 1963 horror flick has the kind of curiosity value that could fuel a bevy of film studies doctorates.
It was Francis Ford Coppola's first mainstream directorial effort, features a wonderfully unhinged performance by Patrick Magee and is a perfect example of Roger Corman's genius in producing bottom-line knock-offs of film masterpieces.
The hastily devised script consciously references the gothic atmosphere and weird Freudian psychology of Hitchcock's Psycho.
