Abode of the damned

The action begins in 1899 , with a lecture at the University of Oxford on the course of psychiatry , in which students demonstrate the behavioral characteristics of mentally ill people. Eliza Graves, wife of an influential English baronet , has chronic hysteria . The girl is very beautiful and claims to be completely healthy, but the experiment shows the opposite.

Next, the action takes us six months ahead to the foggy forests of Albion , where a young man named Edward Newgate arrives at Stonehurst Mental Hospital , where patients from wealthy and influential families of the empire are kept. He appears to be a graduate of Oxford, perhaps one of those who attended that lecture. In a psychiatric hospital, he is met by a certain Silas Lamb, who appears to be the director of this institution. Lamb invites Newgate to follow him on a detour, where the young man meets Eliza Graves. During the tour, Newgate is amazed at Dr. Lamb's treatment methods, which are not at all like traditional treatments. Here patients are not subjected to “torture” to cure their illness; on the contrary, they are allowed to live in peace and are not trying to cure them. Lamb and Newgate are having a Christmas dinner at the same table as the patients, and the young doctor is struck by huntsman Mickey Finn, who is more than defiant.

Edward soon learns that the hospital is run by mentally unhealthy people, and real doctors and nursing staff are imprisoned in the basement of the building. The current director, Dr. Benjamin Salt, says that Lamb, a former military doctor who killed five soldiers, and Finn, a killer maniac who strangled his sister and mother, got the staff drunk and rioted. Salt asks Newgate to run away and tell about all the authorities or to steal the keys and release them, because despite the scraps that feed them, the prisoners will die faster from the cold and illness. Edward tries to convince Eliza to run with him, but she refuses. Lamb and Finn begin to closely monitor the doctor.

Edward is trying to help the trained staff by bringing them food and medicine, and also trying to understand the whole essence of Lamb, for which he needs his medical history. Almost all staff except Mrs. Pike’s head nurse claim that madmen cannot be understood or cured, even Eliza Graves, who, in a fit of hysteria, torn her ear and gouged out her husband’s eyes, who is now trying to get her out of custody, while Pike says that her husband is a monster. To achieve Newgate’s greater location, Salt advises him to look into the wine cabinet of his former office, where patients' medical records are hidden so that Lamb does not burn them.

Lamb, also trying to gain the confidence of a young doctor, leads him into the wing for the violent, where he is going to destroy the instruments of torture, but first gives Newgate the task of bandaging his arm with the Oxford Ogre, a weak-minded but physically strong patient whom his parents gave him in a big tent right after birth. Although Edward was wounded in the shoulder with a blow, he quickly gained the confidence of the patient when he named him Arthur (the real name "Ogre", which he wrote on the wall - Arthur Timbs). Afterwards, Edward talks to Eliza and talks about the suffering of the prisoners. Eliza says that he knows nothing about the suffering that Salt and his people brought, but when Edward shows the scars on his body, he realizes that he was mistaken.

Edward sneaks into the office and steals a case file and inadvertently hears a conversation between Lamb and Finn. The false huntsman is worried that by spring people will come to the hospital, and Newgate may soon get to the bottom of the truth. Lamb counters by the fact that the prisoners in the basement are unlikely to survive until spring, and Newgate has a passion for Elisa Graves, who is in no hurry to leave the hospital. The conversation is interrupted by anxiety throughout the hospital caused by the escape of two prisoners: Assistant Salt, Dr. Swonvik, and another doctor. Finn catches them at a cliff, where the doctor rushes down from a feeling of inevitability, and Swanvika stabbed with a knife. Lamb tries to imagine Swanwick's death as a fall from a horse, but Newgate quickly exposes the fraud, and a quarrel arises between him and Lamb, which temporarily removes the false director from emotional balance and evokes the memories of what he had done in the war.

In his room, Newgate reads Salt’s notes stating that Lamb’s violence began immediately after his arrival 9 years ago, when he saw doctors scoffing at patients, forcing them to eat and pumping them with drugs. Salt believed that if you find fear, the "source of insanity" of patients, it can be broken and cured. Lamb was the only one whose fear was never found. That same evening, Lamb visits Salt and says that his “method” is more effective, because without drugs and torture, patients have found a greater purity of mind, to which Salt replies that degenerates and perverts can not cope with the clinic, because downs are not able to properly treat catch a cold or keep an eye on the boiler , from which all of them will die if not from hunger, then from cold and illness. Lamb decides to deal with the director once and for all.

In the morning, Edward, who won the sympathy of Eliza with his care for patients, in particular, helped the old blind patient to eat normally, introducing herself to her son who had long been dead in the war, asks to go to Finn's surgery. Lamb shows him Salt tied to the table and is going to conduct electroshock therapy on him. Without the opportunity to help the director of the hospital, Edward assists Lamb and sees the dire consequences of the therapy - Benjamin Salt’s identity is almost destroyed.

On New Year's Eve, when all the psychos decorate the premises and are going to solemnly burn Salt’s things and instruments of torture, Edward talks to Mrs. Pike, who always believed that compassion and understanding are a more effective medicine than the Saltowski “search for fear” or Lamb’s “freedom” . She advises the young doctor to look for the key to Lamb in the punishment cell , where he visited most often.

In the midst of the New Year's ball, Edward tries to communicate with Eliza, but abruptly leaves, asking her to say that he is in the yard. He himself goes to the punishment cell, where he finds an unusual package in the cache. After he goes to the wine cellar at the boiler, where he injects sleeping pills into the champagne through a syringe. He is caught by Finn, who had previously strangled patient Milla, whom Eliza had been looking after all this time, who had become an elder sister for a demented girl. In a difficult battle, Newgate throws Finn into a hole, and then spills coal on him. An attempt to poison patients fails due to the fake huntsman who managed to dig himself up. Lamb neutralizes the doctor by blowing a bottle of champagne on his head.

When Edward was already tied up on the table and preparing for electroshock therapy, Eliza came to him. She shows him his pocket watch with her portrait and believes that Newgate was sent by her husband. Edward admits that having seen her six months ago at that lecture in Oxford, he fell in love with unconsciousness and vowed that he would pull her out of the nuthouse at all costs, since he began to belong to her in body and soul. When Lamb is already preparing for all patients to treat Newgate, he asks to take a photograph of Eliza from his pocket in order to look at her for the last time before forgetting it. Lamb fulfills the last request, but instead of Eliza, the photo shows a young English drummer - one of Lamb's victims. The doctor is lost in memory and walks away.

Finn tries to continue the therapy, but Eliza is stopping him. Even when the false huntsman grabs the girl and she has a fit of hysteria, Edward helps her overcome the disease and fight back the maniac. Almost unraveled by the straps, Edward tells Argthur ogre to press the lever, from which Mickey Finn gets a strong electric discharge , which leads to spontaneous combustion and death from pain shock. The fire from Finn's remains sets fire to the curtains of the room and quickly spreads to the entire hospital. Eliza goes to the basement to free the prisoners, and Edward goes in search of Lamb.

Silas Lamb walks through the rampant department, dressed in a formal uniform, and indulges in memories. During the Boer War , Lamb was a field physician, but when he saw many soldiers mutilated and praying for help, Lamb could not stand it and decided to “ relieve the suffering ” of his patients, the last of which was the very drummer who lost both hands. After Lamb wanted to shoot himself, but then the ammunition in his revolver ran out. It is with that phantom gun in his hand that Newgate finds him, saying that the war is over.

Edward takes out of the burning hospital Lamb, who fell into catatonia . Edward offers Eliza to leave England, as far away from her husband and hospitals, but she hesitates, believing that Edward has no future with an "abnormal" companion. Then he says that he needs to admit something ...

It takes several months. To the restored Stonehurst, where Mrs. Pike became the new leader, Baronet Charles Graves and an Oxford lecturer arrive. At the gate they are met by Arthur Timbes, who has become the gatekeeper. When Mrs. Pike is asked about Eliza, she replies that she was discharged 3 weeks ago by Dr. Edward Newgate. As it turns out, the lecturer is Newgate, and the one who discharged Eliza turned out to be his old patient, suffering from pathological lies and is considered incurable, since for all this time his real name has not been revealed. After the lecture, where he was shown immediately after Eliza, the fake Newgate got into the doctor’s office, stole his pocket watch and Eliza’s case. Newgate believes that he is incurable, to which Mrs. Pike says that they cured each other, and playing chess with Salt Lamb sarcastically declares: "Checkmate."

At this time, in the Hospital of St. Christine in Tuscany , Dr. Lamb and Mrs. Lamb (aka Eliza Graves and the false Edward Newgate) happily dance the waltz and enjoy each other's company. Everyone, one way or another, left his Abode of the Damned.

• Ben Kingsley played a very similar role in the movie Island of the Damned .
• The picture was shot in Bulgaria , a number of scenes - in the palace of the Bulgarian monarchs " Vrana " in Sofia , where Simeon II lives ^[5] .

• " Abode of the Damned " (English) on the Internet Movie Database
• Abode of the Damned (eng.) At Rotten Tomatoes