Bedlam **** (1946, Boris Karloff, Anna Lee) – Classic Movie Review 2,672

‘Sensational Secrets of Infamous Mad-house EXPOSED!’ The 1946 horror movie Bedlam stars Boris Karloff as evil asylum master George Sims.

‘Sensational Secrets of Infamous Mad-house EXPOSED!’

Director Mark Robson’s 1946 horror movie Bedlam 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 in 1761 detains the sane Nell Bowen (Anna Lee) because she is trying to expose the notorious  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.

After an acquaintance of Lord Mortimer (Billy House) dies trying to escape from the asylum, Sims appeases Mortimer by getting his ‘loonies’ to put on a show for him. By the way, a lunatic is a person seen as mentally ill or crazy, deriving from the Latin word lunaticus, meaning ‘moonstruck’, in an age when epilepsy and madness were thought to be caused by the moon.

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

Lord Mortimer says: ‘A capital fellow, this Sims, a capital fellow.’ But Nell Bowen has a different opinion: ‘If you ask me, M’Lord, he’s a stench in the nostrils, a sewer of ugliness, and a gutter brimming with slop.’

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 1732–1734 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.

Mark Robson said they reproduced much of Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress. ‘We virtually used Hogarth as our art director. The dialogue was an amalgam of all kinds of 18th-century characters, including Lord Sandwich.’

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 Newton, 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 (also with Karloff) 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).

The cast

The cast are Boris Karloff as Master George Sims, Anna Lee as Nell Bowen, Billy House as Lord Mortimer, Richard Fraser as Hannay, Glen Vernon as The Gilded Boy, Ian Wolfe as Sidney Long, Jason Robards Sr as Oliver Todd, Leyland Hodgson as John Wilkes, Joan Newton as Dorothea the Dove, Elizabeth Russell as Mistress Sims, Frankie Dee as Pompie, Skelton Knaggs as Varney, John Goldsworthy as Chief Commissioner, Ellen Corby as Queen of the Artichokes, Robert Clarke as Dan The Dog, Nan Leslie, James Logan, John Meredith, Victor Travers, John Ince, Harry Harvey, and Larry Wheat.

Bedlam is directed by Mark Robson, runs 79 minutes, is made and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Val Lewton and Mark Robson, based on A Rake’s Progress by William Hogarth, is shot by Nicholas Musuraca, is produced by Val Lewton, and is scored by Roy Webb.

Release date: May 10, 1946.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,672

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