The Black Sleep

In 19th-century England, a renowned brain surgeon rescues a former student wrongly convicted of murder and spirit him away to an ancient, repurposed abbey far in the countryside. There, he cunningly enlists his pupil to help map the brain’s functions, using living subjects who are subjected to an animation-suspending drug called 'black sleep'. Subsequently, the student, together with the daughter of one of the subjects, discovers that most of these captives have survived but are kept in a dungeon-like cellar, in varying states of physical and mental derangement.