Bedlam (1946) is a film starring Boris Karloff and Anna Lee, and was the last in a series of stylish horror B films produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures. The film was inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, and Hogarth was given a writing credit.
Set in 1761 London, England, the film focuses on events at St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum, a fictionalized version of Bethlem Royal Hospital, also known as "Bedlam". After an acquaintance of aristocrat Lord Mortimer dies in an attempt to escape from the asylum, apothecary general Master George Sims (played by Karloff, a fictionalized version of an infamous head physician at Bethlem, John Monro) appeases Mortimer by having his "loonies" put on a show for him. Mortified by the treatment of the patients, Mortimer's protege Nell Bowen (Lee) seeks the help of Whig politician John Wilks to reform the asylum. Mortimer and Sims conspire to committ Nell to the asylum, where her initial fears of the fellow inmates do not sway her sympathetic commitment to improving their conditions. Frustrated by Nell's progress with the inmates, Sims threatens her with his strongest "cure" but his attempt is thwarted by the very inmates that Nell helped. Ultimately, Sims is literally "deposed" and Nell is rescued by her Quaker friend who had counseled her through the whole process.
When there's a need for speed Get Ed
As the tides of your love, keeps turning. As the sea still runs to the sand. And the fingers of fear, will be stirring. Trying to prove to myself I'm a man. In the night when the silence, surrounds you. Well do you feel so cold and alone? And the soul of the poet, deep inside you. Leaves a mark that needs to be shown.
The days seem much longer. But my time feels cut short. The people all around me, they were so easily bought.
If someone ever tries to mistreat you, I will never be too far away. It means more to me to be needed, than the air that I breathe every day. Even now as I think of tomorrow, oh the pain inside gets worse every day. I feel the doors of my room they are closing, looks as though I can't get away.
I've got this phosphorescent portrait of gentle Jesus meek and mild
I've got this harlot that I'm stuck with carrying another man's child
The solitary star announcing vacancy burnt out as we arrived
They'd throw us back across the border if they knew that we survived
And they were surprised to see us
So they greeted us with palms
They asked for ammunition, acts of contrition and small alms
I might recite a small prayer
If I ever said them
I lay down on an iron frame
Found myself in bedlam
I wish that I could take something for drowning out the noise
Wailing echoes down the corridors
I've got this imaginary radio, and I'm punching up the dial
I've got the A.C. trained on the T.V. so it won't blow up in my eye
And everything that I thought fanciful and mocked as too extreme
Must be family entertainment here in the strange land of my dreams
Now I'm practicing my likeness of St. Francis of Assisi
For if I hold my hand outstretched
A little bird comes to me
I might recite a small prayer
If I ever said them
I lay down on an iron frame
Found myself in bedlam
Escaping from the fingers that were stretching through the bars
Wailing echoes down the corridors
The player piano picks out "Life Goes On"
Ring tone rang out "Jerusalem"
And in this pit of sadness
Where the rank of wretched plunge
We've buried all the innocents
Now we must bury revenge
They've got this scared and decorated girl strapped to the steel trunk of a mustang
And then they drove her down a cypress grove where traitors hang and stars still spangle
They dangled flags and other rags along a coloured thread of twine
And then they dragged that bruised and purple heart along the road to Palestine
Someone went off muttering, he mentioned thirty pieces
Easter saw a slaughtering, each wrapped in bloodstained fleeces
Then my thoughts returned to vengeance, but I put up no resistance
Though I seemed a long way from my home
It really was no distance
And I might recite a small prayer
If I ever said them
I lay down on an iron frame
Found myself in bedlam
Bowing like an actor acknowledging applause
Playing the Crusader who was conquering the Moors
And he knew the consequences, but he won't accept the cause
Looking through the headlines
Sheltered from what’s real
There’s a heat in the street
That you can’t feel
You think we got the great society
The cities will snap before they bury me
Bedlam in the streets of the USA
Oh, you’re stabbed in the back, have a nice day
Social disintegration is paving the way
The next generation, just like yesterday
And you can watch it on tonight’s news
The youth of the streets got nothing to lose
Bedlam in the streets of the USA
Oh, you’re stabbed in the back, have a nice day
They’ve got no hope so they got no fear
Smashed in heads, don’t shed a tear
The tension is mounting and the time is near
Bedlam in the streets of the USA
Oh, you’re stabbed in the back, have a nice day
Looking through the headlines
You’re sheltered from what’s real
There’s a heat in the street
That you can’t feel
Bedlam in the streets of the USA
Oh, you’re stabbed in the back, have a nice day
They’ve got no hope so they got no fear
Smashed in heads, don’t shed a tear
Vested in dementopia, government by lunatic
Vestiges of hysteria in a legal system so sick
A sovereign sanatorium, the policy of rule is insane
Where moral restraints are overrun, Dementia Rex is to blame
An ataxic coup is growing nascent
Amok motivations are ingravescent
Doctors deposed and jugulated in our white house of padded cages
Our politico self-mandated, but psychosis will increase in stages
Lacking the nourishment of maternity, we deemed ourselves brothers
But found no solace in fraternity as the mad drew blood from each other
Mansuete masses, the first to expire
In a congerie of faeces, a visage is mired
De-calcified ossuaries to break
Waifen, flesh bags left cold and prostrate
Dominance asserted with fisticuffs
With shattered dentine, a countenance is stuffed
Indoctrinated to pugilist acts
A riot of two thousand maniacs
The guts strewn from patulous torsos
Our corpus juris in its final death throes
Stewardship, icarian
From unrestrained sadism
A society undone
It's a bloody bedlam
Our hamartia's spun
When scum is killing scum
Thirsting for carrion
It's a fucking bedlam
[solo: "Marshall Law" by A. S. LaBarre]
[solo: "The Atrocity Exhibition" by S. C. McGrath]
[solo: "Politics Make Strange Dead Fellows" by A. S. LaBarre]
[solo: "The Road to Hellville" by S. C. McGrath]
No hope for mad minds, no hope for mankind
Decerebration will clear their heads
Total diaschisis will leave them for dead
A masochistic population makes an abbatoir of the asylum
No control over desquamation, Dementia Rex a panjandrum
Suffering echopraxia as our late doctors' butchery is imitated
Internecine bouts prove dour as my kingdom is extirpated
A charnel house where bloodlust doth reign
Extremities snapped and craniums brained
A gallimaufry of prone brethren
Organs excised and ordure placed therein
From a praetorian psyches devolution
An arterial spray, the fruits of revolution
With grumous gore, the halls are replete
As cardial pulses surcease their beats
Stewardship, icarian
From unrestrained sadism
A society undone
It's a bloody bedlam
Our hamartia's spun
When scum is killing scum
Thirsting for carrion
As the tides of your love, keeps turning. As the sea still runs to the sand. And the fingers of fear, will be stirring. Trying to prove to myself I'm a man. In the night when the silence, surrounds you. Well do you feel so cold and alone? And the soul of the poet, deep inside you. Leaves a mark that needs to be shown.
The days seem much longer. But my time feels cut short. The people all around me, they were so easily bought.
How long can we live this way?
How long 'till the rain starts coming down?
Everyone here's been wondering
When will it be over?
I hear the night train every evening
Maybe change is coming soon
With the harvest moon
Take me down to the river
Take me to the preacher-man
I can't wait any longer
I messed up all I can
I hear the night train singing in the distance
Maybe the angels are coming soon
With the harvest moon
If the river's rising
Look to the dark horizon
For the harvest moon, yeah
Wait a minute, just a little bit longer
It's all up to me and you
Wait a minute, just a little bit longer
It's all up to me and you
Wait a minute, just a little bit longer