Search - Dementia on DVD

Dementia--a totally underrated, unique gem of a flick

Zeph E. Daniel | Sherman Oaks, CA United States | 06/29/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I accidently ordered Dementia (1999), directed by Woody Keith, when indeed I was trying to order Dementia 13, the classic, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. From the cover, it looked like a typical low-budget horror-thriller with a eroticism of a bent nature throughout. I was blown away. The DVD was in Letter-Box format, Dolby Digital, and the look of the film was anything but low-budget. Picture a clashing of opposites, a bucolic ocean home versus a lock-up psych ward, two women, a servant and an heiress, their mutually misguided attraction--a psychiatric nurse and her patient--whose roles reverse. In fact everything reverses, colors and textures, nothing is as it first appears--and the world is dreamy and surreal. Sex is power, money is sex, greed is rampant and psychotic behavior is normal. You just don't know what to make of this world that director Woody Keith created. I have never seen characters like this on the screen, or anywhere else--I'm not sure they are real; against the backdrop of beauty and abundance, they represent the dark, the misguided, the lost--now being driven not by reason, but by pure lust for it all, money, sex, and the power of death over life. The psycho husband of the psych-nurse, Sonny, was my favorite character--played by Matt Schulze, an actor I just saw in the movie, The Fast and the Furious. This guy is scary. With a serpentine allure, his off balance sexuality and surly demeanor ignites the passion of the heiress, and inflames the hatred of of the heiress's caregiver, Luisa. But instead of having that be grounds for the murder of the heiress and the stealing of her fortune, the heiress and the nurse have sex--which then inflames the desire of Sonny for the heiress, with the idea of his wife being the maid! Seriously twisted. Because the psych nurse hides a deep submissiveness and need to be told/ordered/forced to please...and she cannot control her need for sex.So it's the ultimate psycho-menage a trois movie. It's one of those little sleepers for fans of horror, psychotic/sex thrillers and the like. I recommend it--if anything, it's anti-Hollywood and anti-convention. After being disappointed buying DVD movies unseen--Hollywood's rejects that didn't make it to the screen--this is a breath of fresh air. One of a kind!"

Perverse little flick

erinmary | Canyon Lake, TX USA | 07/15/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Dementia is a good name for this movie. But it's worth watching just for Matt Schulze's performance as Sonny, the seriously disturbed husband of one of the two female lead characters. The two females are a mental patient and her nurse. Just when you think that sanity is returning, Sonny shows up again and we discover that these people haven't even scratched the surface of psychosis.Be warned - this movie is not for the squeamish or the innocent."