Programme notes CH 03 — The Haunted Screen
Dementia 13
A widow forges her way into an Irish family's castle. Something in the pond forges back.
Coppola, twenty-four, shooting on Roger Corman's leftover schedule and budget in Ireland, delivers a gothic axe picture that is better constructed than it has any right to be — the underwater reveal is real filmmaking, not apprentice work. Corman's factory was the last great studio apprenticeship, and this is one of its cleanest artifacts: a future master learning, in public, at seventy cents on the dollar.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Photographed by
- Charles Hannawalt
- With
- William Campbell · Patrick Magee · Bart Patton · Luana Anders
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Two graduates of the Corman factory: a 24-year-old Coppola given a castle and a schedule, and a two-day comedy that hands Jack Nicholson his first unforgettable scene. The B-movie as film school, tuition paid in speed.