The Dark Past

A group of escaped convicts takes over a house, holding the family inside hostage. Their leader, Al Walker, is haunted by a nightmare that returns night after night, and the man of the house happens to be a police psychiatrist, Dr. Andrew Collins. Collins offers to listen to the dream and try to interpret it, and the standoff becomes something closer to a session between captor and captive while the household waits.

The Dark Past is a 1948 crime drama directed by Rudolph Maté, the first of the films he directed. The screenplay was written by Michael Blankfort, Albert Duffy and Philip MacDonald, and Buddy Adler produced it for Columbia Pictures. William Holden plays Al Walker, with Nina Foch as Betty, Lee J. Cobb as Dr. Andrew Collins, Adele Jergens as Laura Stevens, Stephen Dunne as Owen Talbot and Lois Maxwell as Ruth Collins. Thirty-nine cast members are credited, and the film runs 74 minutes.

Maté went on to direct When Worlds Collide, Paula, Second Chance, The Black Shield of Falworth, Three Violent People and The 300 Spartans. On IMDb the film holds a 6.3 rating from around 2,500 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6 from a much smaller group of 41 votes. A critics' rating of 5.7 from eight reviews places it close to the audience scores on both sites, suggesting a modest but consistent reception.