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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Turner Home Ent
Salesrank: 62306
Released: October 4, 2005 |
| Our Price: $8.48 |
| Used Price: $5.00 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The most celebrated star in the history of screen horror headlines these two atmospheric works filled with producer Val Lewton's trademark mix of mood, madness and premeditated dread. Boris Karloff shares a quarantined house with other strangers on a plague-infested perhaps spirit-haunted Isle of the Dead. St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum in 1761 London is the setting for Bedlam. Karloff gives an uncanny performance as the doomed overseer who fawns on high-society benefactors while ruling the mentally disturbed inmates with an iron fist. Mark Robson, who edited three films for Lewton and directed five, guides both films.
Isle of the Dead / Bedlam Reviews:
Very old (classic) movie in DVD format... 
2008-11-04 - Exceeded my expectations....cheaper than had I purchased on eBay! I am delighted as I had been looking for this item for quite a long time!
Trapped on an Island in Hades 
2008-10-26 - [This review is part of my 31 Days of Halloween series]
I'm focusing on ISLE OF THE DEAD, but also recommend the companion DVD BEDLAM.
Producer Val Lewton got the theme & title for this little horror gem from Arnold Böcklin's (1827-1901) painting with the same name. In the painting there are two figures in a small boat just off shore from a rather dank & weedy looking island. One figure is standing, obscured head to foot by a shroud like cloak. The other figure is seated, also indiscernible and presumably rowing. The kicker is that you can't tell if the standing figure is looking toward or away from the island, just as you can't tell if the boat is moving to the island or away from it. There is an almost overwhelming sense of stagnation. The more you study the painting, the more disturbing it seems to become.
The movie takes place in Greece during a terrible war with carnage all around. Karloff (in an outstanding performance) plays a war weary General who has become desensitized to death & dying & handing out commands to kill & destroy. Cholera (well, I think it's cholera) is scourging the countryside & Karloff goes to the island to enforce quarantine on its few inhabitants residing at an inn. The people include an affable Doctor, an invalid woman & her young & beautiful attendant, an elderly housekeeper, and several others.
Apparently the invalid is suffering from catalepsy & dreads being buried alive (I've explored this condition in PREMATURE BURIAL & THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.) The Doctor & Karloff discuss the ramifications of death being ever present & so near to them. The General reveals himself to be a hard-boiled materialist, a total nonbeliever. The Doctor on the other hand decides to make an experiment of their predicament. He will attempt to invoke the ancient gods to protect them from disease. Incidentally a triple headed dog relic suggests that the island was once the worship place of the goddess Hekate, a deity of black magic.
The other plotline involves the worsening condition of the lady & the growing suspicion of the elderly housekeeper that the beautiful attendant is a vampire, draining her mistress of the life force.
With a set-up like this frightening things are bound to happen-and they do.
ISLE OF THE DEAD is slowly paced, the intellectual issues & the elements of terror carefully presented & explored.
No sex or sleaze, just a good horror flick.
Bedlam is great.
2008-04-15 - BEDLAM: This is an excellent psychological thriller with good performances by Boris Karloff and Anna Lee. Unlike a dozen of today's horror movies (I mean, with a lot of carnage and blood), the real climax of this movie is presented to us on the dialogues and acting itself. I think, that's why some people -- especially, the youngers -- might not enjoy this production. But for Cinema lovers, it is a worth watching movie.
ISLE OF THE DEAD: It is not as good as "Bedlam". Despite some good scenes, the plot seemed weak and redudant.
Boris Karloff excels
2007-06-28 - Isle of the Dead
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE / Hamlet Act 1. Scene V abt. 1601
`Under conquest and oppression the people of Greece allowed their legends to degenerate into superstition; the Goddess Aphrodite giving way to the `Vorvolaka.' This nightmare figure was very much alive in the mines of the peasants when Greece fought the victorious war of 1912."
Gen. Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) is an experienced watcher. That is he must watch over his troops to be sure the do what they are supposed to and survive to win the day.
Finding some time take a war correspondent (Marc Cramer) to visit the grave yard island where his wife is buried. There he meats a strange collection of people and an unseen enemy that is much deadlier than any bullet. Will he be able to fight it logically and scientifically? Or will his cultural fears lead him to see the truth?
Once again we see that Boris Karloff can act and that Val Lewton can take a scary title and turn it from a cheap horror movie into a classic Psychological Thriller.
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Bedlam
Story suggested by The William Hogarth painting Bedlam plate 8 "The Rake's Progress
Once again Val Lewton takes what would have been a second rate horror story and turns it into a sit on the edge of your seat psychological thriller. The basic question of the story is the same as the one in his movie "Ghost Ship"; that is, is man fundamentally good and helpful of others or is he so self centered that he will act even to his own ultimate demise? An added element is that of not quite being granted all mental faculties.
The year is 1791 Lord Mortimer (Billy House) is just one of the upper class (Wiggs) that gets his kicks from watching the loonies of Bedlam loon. His protégé (Anna Lee) is discussed at the treatment of the "guests" by the head apothecary, Master George Sims (Boris Karloff who can actually act). She attempts to correct this to the detriment of Lord Mortimer. So Lord Mortimer and Sims invite her as a guest to Bedlam.
Will she ever get out or just go crazy. While there she applies a theory supplied by a Quaker (Richard Fraser), one of the Society of Friends if this works the tables may turn on Sims. What can Sims say in his defense?
Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People
Boris Karloff Plays Cruel Lunatics In Two Entertaining Films From The Forties
2007-06-23 - ISLE OF THE DEAD and BEDLAM are two of the nine intelligently made "B" horror movies producer Val Lewton made for RKO in the 1940's. Both are short (about an hour in length) films more of psychological suspense than real horror. Boris Karloff is great in both films though ironically his acting is the best in ISLE OF THE DEAD while BEDLAM is the better overall film.
ISLE OF THE DEAD takes place on a Greek island during the 1912 Balkan War.
Boris Karloff, wearing a curly grey wig (I suppose to make him look Grecian) plays a Greek General nicknamed "The Watchdog". We first meet him forcing another Greek officer and former friend to commit suicide because he disgraced himself by showing up late with his troops to a battle. This shocks a young American journalist who witnesses this but the journalist still agrees to accompany the General to a nearby island to visit the grave of his long deceased wife. When they reach the island they found the grave of the general's wife and all others entombed there have been ransacked for archaeological finds and the bodies destroyed. On the island the general and journalist discover the comfortable home of a charming Swiss archaeologist. Staying with the archaeologist are an old Greek servant woman named Kyra, a British diplomat and his invalid wife, the wife's beautiful Greek nurse, Thea, a doctor and a cockney salesman. The salesman soon dies of the plague and the rest of the group including the general and journalist are quarantined on the island and begin to sicken and die one by one. Kyra creates hysteria with her belief that Thea is one of the legendary Greek vampires known as the Vrykolakes and the General is particularly susceptible to this belief making his mental health greatly deteriorate. The ending is very over the top and the dialogue and plot become more and more clunky as the movie continues. Karloff's performance remains excellent while everything else sinks farther and farther in to mediocrity.
BEDLAM is a very ambitious movie with incredibly genuine looking sets and costumes. Karloff is a true villain here playing Sims, the head of the infamous 18th century London insane asylum, Bedlam. Nell, a beautiful outspoken former actress now living as the protege of an old obese but immensely wealthy lord takes an interest in improving the lives of those committed to the asylum after viewing the conditions and actually seeing one of the inmates die "performing" in toxic gold paint at a party for the amusement of the rich. Nell and Sims have a mutual hatred of each other and through a variety of rather complex manipulations he manages to have her committed to Bedlam. The story does not end there though since Karloff as Sims has some payback coming from Nell and the "loonies". Though Sims and his fate are fictional the atrocities that are shown in the movie are historically accurate as tourists of that time period were allowed to tour the facility to laugh at the retarded and insane inmates and even prod them with long sticks to incite them in to rage. From the powdered wigs to the women hawking wares in the street the movie does an admirable job bringing 18th century London to life on a B budget and as always Karloff is excellent playing evil.
