The Dark Past

Dr. Collins explains to the detective that he believes psychotherapy can steer a young offender away from crime. He proposes to illustrate his method through a long flashback that shows how he came to work for the police. The conversation sets up the narrative frame for the events that follow.

As Collins travels with his wife and son to a remote vacation cabin, a prison escapee, Al Walker, and his small gang are fleeing toward the same secluded cove. The impending convergence foreshadows the danger that will intrude on their peaceful trip.

Along the way, Walker gratuitously shoots the warden he had held hostage in the back. The act reveals his volatile nature and sets a grim tone for the captivity to come.

Walker, his girlfriend Betty, and two gunmen crash the cabin and seize everyone as hostages while awaiting a boat pickup. Collins remains with the three guests, while the others are restrained; the servants are tied in the basement. The tense standoff becomes a laboratory for Collins's supposed therapeutic insight.

Betty and the gunmen guard those upstairs, while the servants are bound in the basement. Concurrently, Collins watches Walker's behavior closely, noting that the ringleader's violence contrasts with his odd interest in psychological books.

Fred Linder, a colleague, arrives to deliver a hunting rifle and tries to slip away behind a curtain. Walker wrestles him, and Linder is wounded, raising the stakes of the standoff.

Throughout the ordeal, Collins notices that Walker, while violent and not very bright, is nonetheless drawn to books on psychoanalysis and the subconscious. This unusual interest foreshadows the potential for psychological examination to unlock his violence.

Betty tells Collins that Walker is prone to nightmares, which are depicted in negative film images. The dreams show him standing under a leaking umbrella with a paralyzed hand, trapped behind bars. Collins begins to see a link between trauma and compulsion.

Walker awakens Collins and asks him to analyze his dreams. Collins agrees to guide a dream analysis, viewing it as a possible path to understanding and healing.

With Collins's guidance, Walker remembers a childhood scene: hiding under a table in a bar while police shoot his father. The trauma is intensified because the boy had revealed the hiding place, and his hand is stained with his father's blood. Collins explains that recovering this memory could free him from the nightmares and reduce his urge to kill.

Collins asserts that retrieving the lost memory could end the cycle of nightmares and uncontrollable violence. He frames the psychological breakthrough as a potential cure that would alter Walker's future behavior.

A servant escapes and alerts the police; the cabin is surrounded. Walker seems ready to shoot but cannot pull the trigger, despite his fingers no longer being paralyzed, signaling a possible shift in his psychological state.

The flashback ends and the police detective agrees to let Collins analyze the young suspect they had been discussing. The decision marks a shift from interrogation to therapeutic intervention based on remembered trauma. The frame narrative returns to the present, with Collins poised to test his method on the real case.