Bedlam **** (1946, Boris Karloff, Anna Lee) – Classic Movie Review 2672

Director Mark Robson’s 1946 horror movie stars the great horror icon Boris Karloff as evil asylum master, apothecary general Master George Sims. Sadly it proved the last in the series of stylish B-movie horror films produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures and is the third and last collaboration between the star and producer.

The admirable Karloff is excellent in one of his best roles as Sims, who detains the sane Nell Bowen (Anna Lee) because she is trying to expose the appalling conditions of the Bedlam mental institution in 18th-century London, fictionalised here as the St Mary’s of Bethlehem Asylum. Its real name was the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Sims is a fictionalised version of an infamous head physician at Bethlem, John Monro.

Lord Mortimer (Billy House) conspires with Sims to commit his protégée Nell to the asylum after she seeks the help of Whig politician John Wilkes (Leyland Hodgson) to reform the place, where the patients are being mistreated.

Bedlam is co-written by director Robson and esteemed fantasy producer Lewton (under the pseudonym of Carlos Keith), but alas the good reviews they earned didn’t make it a hit. It cost $350,000 and recorded a loss of $40,000.

Eighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress engravings, a series of eight paintings, provide the inspiration for Robson’s and Lewton’s screenplay and are used as linking devices between scenes. Unusually, Hogarth is even given a writing credit, and therefore proper respect. Film-maker Alan Parker has described the works as an ancestor to the storyboard, so Hogarth deserves his writing credit, though even films of various Shakespeare’s plays have forgotten to credit the Bard.

As producer, Lewton piles up the convincing period detail, while ace cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca ensures a splendidly dark and moody atmosphere.

Bizarrely, the British censor of the day refused to give it a classification. After some UK TV showings it was submitted to the BBFC in 1998 when it received an uncut video PG video certificate.

Also in the cast are Richard Fraser, Ian Wolfe, Jason Robards Sr, Glen Vernon, Joan Lewton, Elizabeth Russell, Ellen Corby, Nan Leslie, James Logan, John Goldsworthy, John Meredith, Victor Travers, John Ince, Harry Harvey and Larry Wheat.

The film has been released on DVD by Warner Bros paired with Isle of the Dead and as part of the Val Lewton Horror Collection.

The Bethlem Royal Hospital still exists. Originally the hospital was near Bishopsgate just outside the walls of the City of London. It moved to Moorfields just outside the Moorgate in the 17th century, then to St George’s Fields in Southwark in the 19th century, before moving to its current location at Monks Orchard in West Wickham, in the London Borough of Bromley in 1930.

The word ‘bedlam’, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital’s old nickname. Although the hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums.

The Hogarth paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, where they are normally on display.

The dress Anna Lee is wearing as she mounts her horse is the one Vivien Leigh made from the curtains in Gone with the Wind (1939).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2672

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