The Black Sleep
1956 film by Reginald Le Borg
The Black Sleep (American reissue title Dr. Cadman's Secret) is a 1956 American independent horror film produced by Bel Air Productions, directed by Reginald LeBorg, and written by John C. Higgins from a story by Gerald Drayson Adams. It stars Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, and Akim Tamiroff. Tor Johnson appears in a supporting role. The film was produced by Aubrey Schenck and Howard W. Koch, as part of a four-picture finance-for-distribution arrangement with United Artists.
The film was released in the US in June 1956 as a double feature with the 1955 British film The Quatermass Xperiment (which was retitled The Creeping Unknown in the US). The Black Sleep was re-released in 1962 under the title Dr. Cadman's Secret on a double feature with Voodoo Island (which at that point was retitled Silent Death).
Plot
In a London prison in 1872, Dr. Gordon Ramsay is awaiting execution for the murder of a man named Curry, despite his claims of innocence.
“The Black Sleep” enters the record as 1956 film by Reginald Le Borg. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Black, Sleep and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Black Sleep” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Black, Sleep and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1059488. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1955, 1962 and 1872.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Black Sleep”, its source revision and the description used here.
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Black Sleep” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.