While working as an assistant to Roger Corman on The Young Racers, Francis Ford Coppola talked his way into $20,000 and the chance to make another film at the same time. The result was Dementia 13, a beautifully composed, photographed and modulated horror film, set in a looming Victorian castle on an isolated British island. The plot involves a series of gory ax-murders, and deals primarily with the psychological make-up of each member of the family involved, plus the haunting presence of a brother drowned some years before.