The Dark Past

Held hostage in a lakeside cabin by a pathological thug, Al Walker (William Holden), and his criminal cohorts, Dr. Collins (Lee J. Cobb) overwhelms the notorious killer using a single weapon, a book entitled “The Criminal Mind and Insanity.” A criminal psychologist, Dr. Collins launches this remake of 1939’s Blind Alley with a sober voice-over about saving society’s less fortunate; then, with implacable cool, the pipe-puffing shrink calmly unravels the nightmare that has plagued wacko Walker, a nightmare visualized in artfully reversed imagery, surely the inspiration of director Maté, the master lensman behind The Passion of Joan of Arc and others. In this taut siege, the claustrophobic cabin becomes the hemmed-in equivalent of a compressed Freudian psychology that includes a helpful lecture on how the conscious and unconscious minds are separated by a “censor band.” When The Dark Past dissolves that band, the emitted light is blinding. —Steve Seid