| Escape from Broadmoor | |
| Director: | John Gilling |
| Producer: | Harry Reynolds |
| Screenplay: | John Gilling |
| Starring: | John Stuart Victoria Hopper John Le Mesurier |
| Cinematography: | Cyril Bristow |
| Editing: | Maurice Rootes |
| Distributor: | Grand National Pictures (British) |
| Runtime: | 38 minutes |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
Escape from Broadmoor is a 1948 British second feature ('B')[1] short film directed and written by John Gilling and starring Victoria Hopper, John Stuart and John Le Mesurier, in one of his earliest screen appearances.[2] A man escapes from an asylum and is hunted down by police.
The title is a reference to Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. It was the last film appearance of Victoria Hopper who had been a prominent leading lady in the 1930s.
An insane killer escapes from Broadmoor Hospital, and returns to the scene of a ten-year-old crime, where the ghost of a servant girl he killed is bent on revenge.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This is a hackneyed story ... The film is a tedious and deplorably unimaginative production."[3]
Chibnall and Macfarlaine, writing in The British 'B' Film, describe the film as "a fanciful melodrama ... interesting in the way it confronts the themes of loss, guilt, atonement, revenge and the survival of the spirit, that were preoccupations in a variety of post-war genres."