In his last film for RKO, Val Lewton, inspired by Hogarth's illustrations of an eighteenth century London asylum, explores "Bedlam," rendering Hogarth's engravings throughout as a subliminal confirmation of his own dark images. The inmates, housed in cages, live out their "separate dreams" while being treated as beasts at the hands of their cruel master, Boris Karloff, a human incubus. When a flamboyantly sane woman (Anna Lee) attempts to expose conditions at the asylum, she is incarcerated there for her trouble. Trying to save "them" she becomes one of them; her name echoes through the halls from cage to cage as a chilling, bestial welcome. Among the film's many frighteningly ironic images is that of the Gilded Boy, a lad from the asylum who is painted in gold to impersonate Reason at a masquerade ball and who slowly suffocates while Karloff forces him to recite. Under Mark Robson's direction, the film contains less of the purely visual, suggestive poetry than is characteristic of Lewton's earlier productions (although what there is, is choice); but striving for an A quality production, it features uniformly fine performances.