The Dark Past 1948

Police psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Collins believes he can turn a young suspect away from crime. Through an extended flashback, the film traces how he came to work for the police.

While Collins, then a college professor, heads to a vacation cabin with his wife and son, prison escapee and convicted murderer Al Walker and his small gang race toward a secluded cove. Along the way, Walker gratuitously shoots the warden he had held hostage in the back, a chilling moment that raises eyebrows around him.

Collins is entertaining three guests when Walker, his girlfriend Betty, and two gunmen burst in and seize the house, waiting for a boat pickup. With the servants tied in the basement and the others upstairs guarded by Betty and the gang, Collins watches Walker’s behavior downstairs, explaining that his profession has trained him to cure. When Prof. Fred Linder, a colleague of Collins, arrives to deliver a hunting rifle, he mentions the prison escape but also notices that someone is hiding behind a curtain. Pretending to leave, Linder grabs the rifle, but Walker wrestles with him, wounding Linder.

Throughout, Collins notices that Walker—an intensely volatile, not particularly bright man—is nonetheless drawn to some of Collins’ books on psychoanalysis and the subconscious. Betty, instructed to keep an eye on Collins while Walker sleep-watches, tells the professor that Walker is prone to nightmares (visualized as negative film images) of standing under a leaking umbrella with a paralyzed hand and being trapped behind bars.

Walker awakens Collins to suggest analyzing his dreams, and the idea resonates with him. With Collins’ guidance, Walker recalls a childhood scene where he hid under a bar table and watched his father be shot to death by police. The trauma is deepened by the fact that the boy had pointed police to his father, and because his hand was smeared with his father’s blood that leaked through the table above him. Collins explains that recovering this lost memory could stop the nightmares and prevent future killings.

Meanwhile, a servant escapes and alerts the police, and the cabin is soon surrounded. Walker seems ready to shoot it out, but he cannot pull the trigger, even as his fingers are no longer paralyzed. The flashback ends, and the detective agrees to let Collins pursue the analysis of the young suspect they had been discussing.