Escape from Broadmoor

Director John Gilling packed quite a bit into his life - heading for Hollywood in his teens he tried prize fighting, acting, stage managing etc before returning to Britain in 1933 where he found work at Gainsborough Studios. After the war he teamed up with producer Harry Reynolds and began to make films that were extended shorts (35-45 minutes) and the first "Escape From Broadmoor" was not only notable for John Le Mesurier's debut, it had extensive location shooting. This was to be the first in a series of "psychic mysteries" that the writer/director Gilling hoped would interest viewers.

The police have reopened the Pendacost case, a criminal has escaped from Broadmoor Insane Asylum and the police hope he will revisit the house he tried to rob ten years before. He is holed up in a deserted house with a petty crim, Jenkins, who is bringing him supplies, not realising the identity of the escapee but more than keen when the older man talks of a big time robbery plan. The police have already staked out the house but the owner is having premonitions that someone is trying to send him a message. Slinky slatted shadows and a wandering cat conjures up the supernatural.

Interesting to see kindly John Le Mesurier of "Dad's Army" fame as an unpredictable psychopath - for his first movie he does alright.

I re-visited "Escape from Broadmoor" (1948) starring John Stuart, John Le Mesurier, Victoria Hopper, Tony Doonan, and others. Written and directed by John Gilling in Britain, this is one of more than thirteen films Gilling wrote and which were made between 1947 and 1950 alone. For a short period he and producer Harry Reynolds had planned to make a series of rather short features (or long shorter films), and "Escape from Broadmoor" is one of them. It times in at 38 minutes.

Broadmoor Hospital is one of three high-secure psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales "internationally renowned for its highly specialised care and research work". John Le Mesurier escaped twenty years ago from this institution after being placed there following a murder charge. He now is after some rubies in a home of Gillie Fenwick, a place where Le Mesurier murdered the maid years before. What he doesn't expect after being there with his partner Doonan is seeing the maid he murdered! And - she seems highly unafraid of Le Mesurier or his gun...

This bit of horror and psychologically macabre substance is the stuff that Gilling went on to write and direct for years afterward, mostly for Hammer Productions. This one still plays very well, thank you. Even though Le Mesurier in his autobiography considers this early film of his trash (it was his first feature film outside of made for television films in early British TV), it most certainly is not trash at all; and, in fact, is recommended for viewing for those who enjoy its genre.

John Le Meseurier breaks out of prison, where he had been sent after evading the hangman's noose by giving evidence against his accomplice in a murder. He talks Tony Doonan into breaking into the house in which he had committed the earlier crime; there's a safe where some valuable jewels are kept. When they are in mid-work, however, a young woman comes in and proceeds to mock them....

It's Le Meseurier's first movie, but it's also John Gilling's first movie as a director. Given his career later, it should come as no surprise that it's a ghost story, and a decent creepy-crawly. What may come as a surprise is its running time. 38 minutes is too long for a short subject and too short for even a B picture. It could very well work in a long program or a three-feature show, but that was not the standard even back then. It's like the novella in fiction these days, with all the fiction magazines gone. Still, it would fit in nicely with the coming world of the television, where forty minutes might appear as a hole in the scheduling.