Good Morning Everyone…  Here is the movie lineup for November, and it’s another pair of really great Boris Karloff films… and I’m not speaking of Frankenstein or Dracula or the Wolf Man.  No… these films are dramatic enough without fake Hollywood monsters.

The feature film is Bedlam, a well told tale of the fight to improve both the treatment and the living conditions of people incarcerated in 18th century insane asylums in London.  The following is from the New York Times review of the day.

“One of the great shames of eighteenth-century England was St. Mary’s of Bethlehem, the insane asylum known infamously to Londoners of the period as Bedlam. The filth, cruelty and unbelievable squalor of the place spurred the great painter-satirist Hogarth to create one of his most biting canvases. From this background an imaginative crew at RKO has produced “Bedlam,” which had its première yesterday at the Rialto.”

The critic went on to say, “This is a production several cuts above the average run of so-called horror films.” I can only add that this film still holds up these seventy years later.

Our second film, The Man They Could Not Hang, also has nothing to do with celluloid monsters. It is about a scientist (Boris Karloff) who has invented a system that can resuscitate a heart that has stopped.  Because of a lab assistant’s interference, the system fails causing the death of another assistant.  Brought to trial, our scientist is found guilty.  I won’t divulge the rest of the story other than to say the suspense builds up to the very end.

Two things make this story stand out… for once the lab equipment looks real and not like the Universal Studio flashing lights and arcing electric bolts… and the acting is a pleasure to watch.  This is no ordinary “B” horror film.  In fact, it isn’t really a horror film.

Our double feature Boris Karloff night is on Friday, November 18th at 7 PM at Old City Hall.

Hope you can take a break from the holiday rush to come and relax for these two movies.
Paul Becker