Flicks of Shame: what's a nice actor like you doing in a movie like this?

Beyond Bedlam (1993)

It’s rather hard to describe someone as an actress when the highlight of their career is not being completely terrible in Austin Powers, but for all her stilted delivery and awkward presence, Liz Hurley has somehow managed to find and maintain a niche in the celebrity pantheon. Her continued fame certainly has nothing to do with this utterly preposterous Brit horror, which followed her hardly auspicious Hollywood debut in the Wesley Snipes plane punch-up, Passenger 57.

Hurley stars as Stephanie Lyell, a genius neurologist (no laughing at the back, please) working on a drug that would fix the broken bits of psychopathic brains. Or something like that. She is, predictably, rather vague on the details. Just to set the scene, the lab where she’s working on this ground-breaking project, at the supposedly prestigious London Institute of Neurology, is a dark room with one table and some test tubes. Even if you attended St. Hooligans School for Glue Sniffing Apes, your old chemistry classroom was better stocked – and better lit – than this obvious movie set.

In keeping with this low rent approach to research, Stephanie has just two test subjects for her wonder drug – Gilmour, an imprisoned serial killer known as The Bone Man (played by Keith Allen, hamming it up with all the drama school malice he can muster) and, in a rather unscientific twist, herself. Yep, Stephanie has been shooting up with an experimental brain compound and as a result the barking mad Gilmour now has the ability to enter and manipulate her dreams. And, for no apparent reason, this ability also extends to the people who live in her block of flats.

This is supposed to explain why a noisy neighbour dives out of his window and bursts into flames, and why an elderly woman hangs herself after dreaming of giving a young man a blow job. And, believe it or not, octogenarian oral isn’t as low as this film sinks.

Called in to investigate these mysterious and ludicrous demises is Terry Hamilton (Craig Fairbrass, best known for his time on British soap EastEnders), a lumbering cockney copper with a tragic past – he accidentally shot his own wife when Gilmour took her hostage. The enormously muscled Fairbrass makes for a wonderfully unconvincing detective, looking for all the world like he’d be more at home delivering kissograms rather than arrest warrants.

As plot devices crash into each other like drunken wasps, Terry and Stephanie find their reality being turned upside down as Gilmour messes with their minds from the comfort of his cell. This does at least give us another of the more memorable images from the movie – after the cocksucking pensioner, of course – in the shape of fellow EastEnders escapee Anita Dobson as Terry’s dead wife, calmly serving tea while bleeding from a bullet wound in the chest. And it’s through this bizarre interlude that we discover the downside to Gilmour’s power – if you tell the visions to go away, they do. Freddy Krueger he ain’t.

With nothing else left to pad out what little plot the movie has, Terry and Stephanie set off to the Institute to kill Gilmour – stopping along the way to fight and kill a bunch of riot cops for no obvious reason. There follows a protracted and astonishingly dull series of fake scares, crap mind games and a long fist fight during which Gilmour (or a mental projection of Gilmour that can take and receive punches, it’s not entirely clear which) returns from apparent death no less than three times.

By the time our wooden heroes finally dump Gilmour’s bloody corpse back in his cell, only for it to vanish as they close the door, three questions will be dominating your mind: What just happened? Why did it just happen? And why couldn’t I have spent the last eighty minutes doing something more entertaining, like slamming my genitals in a car door?

Need to know: Beyond Bedlam was based on a novel by Harry Adam Knight, who also wrote the book which inspired Carnosaur (see: Diane Ladd), and was directed by Vadim Jean, who won several prestigious awards in 1993, though they were for his critically acclaimed comedy, Leon the Pig Farmer, and not this incomprehensible turkey. Stephanie’s noisy neighbour, whose flaming demise kickstarts this whole sort mess (and whose face we never see) was played by Jesse Birdsall, star of Footballer’s Wives, The Bill and the endearingly daft BBC spy-fi show, Bugs. Beyond Bedlam was released in the US under the even more laughable title Nightscare.

For some more dream-based Brit horror see: Timothy Spall.

Availability: Beyond Bedlam is out of print on DVD, though you don’t have to look too hard to find it.

		Beyond Bedlam (1993) It’s rather hard to describe someone as an actress when the highlight of their career is not being completely terrible in Austin Powers, but for all her stilted delivery and awkward presence, Liz Hurley has somehow managed to find and maintain a niche in the celebrity pantheon. Her continued fame certainly has nothing to do with this utterly preposterous Brit horror, which followed her hardly auspicious Hollywood debut in the Wesley Snipes plane punch-up, Passenger 57. Hurley stars as Stephanie Lyell, a genius neurologist (no laughing at the back, please) working on a drug that would fix the broken bits of psychopathic brains. Or something like that. She is, predictably, rather vague on the details. Just to set the scene, the lab where she’s working on this ground-breaking project, at the supposedly prestigious London Institute of Neurology, is a dark room with one table and some test tubes. Even if you attended St. Hooligans School for Glue Sniffing Apes, your old chemistry classroom was better stocked – and better lit – than this obvious movie set. In keeping with this low rent approach to research, Stephanie has just two test subjects for her wonder drug – Gilmour, an imprisoned serial killer known as The Bone Man (played by Keith Allen, hamming it up with all the drama school malice he can muster) and, in a rather unscientific twist, herself. Yep, Stephanie has been shooting up with an experimental brain compound and as a result the barking mad Gilmour now has the ability to enter and manipulate her dreams. And, for no apparent reason, this ability also extends to the people who live in her block of flats. This is supposed to explain why a noisy neighbour dives out of his window and bursts into flames, and why an elderly woman hangs herself after dreaming of giving a young man a blow job. And, believe it or not, octogenarian oral isn’t as low as this film sinks. Called in to investigate these mysterious and ludicrous demises is Terry Hamilton (Craig Fairbrass, best known for his time on British soap EastEnders), a lumbering cockney copper with a tragic past – he accidentally shot his own wife when Gilmour took her hostage. The enormously muscled Fairbrass makes for a wonderfully unconvincing detective, looking for all the world like he’d be more at home delivering kissograms rather than arrest warrants. As plot devices crash into each other like drunken wasps, Terry and Stephanie find their reality being turned upside down as Gilmour messes with their minds from the comfort of his cell. This does at least give us another of the more memorable images from the movie – after the cocksucking pensioner, of course – in the shape of fellow EastEnders escapee Anita Dobson as Terry’s dead wife, calmly serving tea while bleeding from a bullet wound in the chest. And it’s through this bizarre interlude that we discover the downside to Gilmour’s power – if you tell the visions to go away, they do. Freddy Krueger he ain’t. With nothing else left to pad out what little plot the movie has, Terry and Stephanie set off to the Institute to kill Gilmour – stopping along the way to fight and kill a bunch of riot cops for no obvious reason. There follows a protracted and astonishingly dull series of fake scares, crap mind games and a long fist fight during which Gilmour (or a mental projection of Gilmour that can take and receive punches, it’s not entirely clear which) returns from apparent death no less than three times. By the time our wooden heroes finally dump Gilmour’s bloody corpse back in his cell, only for it to vanish as they close the door, three questions will be dominating your mind: What just happened? Why did it just happen? And why couldn’t I have spent the last eighty minutes doing something more entertaining, like slamming my genitals in a car door? Need to know: Beyond Bedlam was based on a novel by Harry Adam Knight, who also wrote the book which inspired Carnosaur (see: Diane Ladd), and was directed by Vadim Jean, who won several prestigious awards in 1993, though they were for his critically acclaimed comedy, Leon the Pig Farmer, and not this incomprehensible turkey. Stephanie’s noisy neighbour, whose flaming demise kickstarts this whole sort mess (and whose face we never see) was played by Jesse Birdsall, star of Footballer’s Wives, The Bill and the endearingly daft BBC spy-fi show, Bugs. Beyond Bedlam was released in the US under the even more laughable title Nightscare. For some more dream-based Brit horror see: Timothy Spall. Availability: Beyond Bedlam is out of print on DVD, though you don’t have to look too hard to find it.
Text © 2008 Dan Whitehead. No cut and paste, y'hear? All images remain the property of the offending studios and their reproduction is covered by Fair Use law.