Dementia 13 (1963)

D13 is an early film from Francis Ford Coppola with a story that's woven around a kind of Hitchcockian situation involving an overbearing mother-in-law (Eithne Dunne), her missing son (Peter Read), and his conniving wife (Luana Anders). The wife must convince the rest of the family that her husband is safe, or risk losing out on inheriting his share of the family fortune.
Set mostly inside and around an Irish castle, it's an amateur work on the surface —the boom mic or its shadow drops in often and the acting isn't exactly convincing — but the almost gothic atmosphere and the reason for the annually performed ceremony that features give it a peculiar edge, one that the black and white stock adds additional atmosphere to.

2½ pond problems out of 5