The Dark Past (1948)

“Perhaps the memory that causes your dream has something to do with your family, your mother maybe.”

            The Dark Past has an interesting plot but it is one that had been and has been done a million times. It starts off with a police psychologist named Dr. Andrew Collins (Lee J. Cobb) looking at men in a line up. He sees there is a young teenage boy in it. The boy looks  nervous and he tries to act tough when he is asked his name. At the end of the lineup he tells someone he wants to work with the young boy. The person asks why of all the men they just saw would he want to waste his time with a boy. Andrew recalls his ordeal with a criminal named Al Walker (William Holden).

            A few years ago Andrew had been working at a college as a psychology professor. He and his family and some of their friends went away to their house out on a lake. He and his friend Professor Linden are set to go out hunting one day and he gives Linden his gun to fix.

            On the same day on the front page of the paper is a story about how a notorious killer named Al Walker had escaped from jail. Walker, his men, the prison warden, and his girlfriend Betty (Nina Foch) are driving in a car down towards the lake. They will be staying at Andrew’s house without him knowing to wait for their getaway. Walker has the car pulled over so the warden can get out. He lets the warden walk a bit and then shoots the man dead. That night they ambush Andrew’s house from the outside in. Walker has the maids shut up in the basement, three of the guests upstairs, and Andrew’s wife and son in another room. Linden comes by the house with the shot gun. He mentions he passed some police officers on the road looking for Walker. Andrew makes a gesture that Walker is in the house and Linden says something about the trigger on the gun not working and points the gun towards where Walker is hiding. Walker comes out and shoots Linden in the arm.

            Every move Andrew makes agitates Walker making him very jumpy. Andrew has kept very calm and makes it a point to study Walker. He notices that the criminal keeps staring at book on insanity. Andrew begins to talk to Walker as if he was a patient. He explains how the brain works in two ways: the conscious and the unconscious. He asks Walker if something traumatic happened to him in his childhood.  Walker immediately gets defensive and anxious. Betty comes downstairs to take care of Walker and help him get to sleep. She explains to Andrew that Walker has the same dream over and over again of being outside and it starts to rain. An umbrella appears over him but there is a hole and he tries to stop the rain from coming in but it keeps coming and it hurts his hand. When he goes to get out from under the umbrella he is behind bars.

            The police come because they have been called by Linden’s wife. Linden was supposed to be home 

around 9:30pm and it is two in the morning. Walker shoots up when he hears the doorbell. He makes Andrew answer it and say that Linden left a long time ago and that he is the only one awake in the house. After the police leave Andrew tells Walker that he can help make his nightmare go away if he will tell him about it. Andrew breaks down the dream: when Walker was younger he lead the police to a man who was doing illegal things. When the police came in he dove under the table. The man was shot and he staggered over to where Walker was under the table and fell on the table. The man’s blood seeped through the cracks and Walker tried to stop the blood from coming through but it dripped onto his hand. Andrew figures Walker is guilty because the man he gave up was his father and he gave up his father so that  he could be alone with his mother who used to baby him when the father was away.

            Maids down in the basement managed to get away and get the police to come to the house. Walker planned to shoot his way out of the house but Andrew put the idea into his head that he can no longer shoot people because of his guilt at killing his father. He was right and Walker is taken away.

            Back in the present Andrew tells the person that he wants to help the young boy seek help because he does not want him to end up like Al Walker. He wants to stop the boy from becoming a true criminal.

            The Dark Past was alright. As I said the story had been done before this and has been done since. It was based off of a play and you get that feeling with the whole story just taking place in the house. William Holden as a bad guy was interesting to see since he always played a good guy. Nina Foch did well in an early role. Lee J. Cobb was believable as the psychologist who keeps it cool with a psychopath in his house. The Dark Past is a film to watch only if you are a fan of either William Holden or Nina Foch. It is not required viewing. 

Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949)

Miss Grant Takes Richmond is subtle comedy starring William Holden and Lucille Ball.    The film starts out with Ellen (Ball) at a secretarial school. She does not do too well but she wants to make her own living she does not want to live off of her aunt and uncle forever. They would rather see her married to the town’s DA named Ralph. The next day in her class, Dick Richmond (Holden) comes in to find a girl to hire for his business. Ellen flops but he picks her anyway.

            The following day Ellen reports for work at Richmond’s real estate office. A large group of people are surrounding a man behind a desk and telling him they all need houses. The guy gets them to go away by taking a phone call about an apartment complex. Dick’s partners Timothy and Kilcoyne are not happy about having Ellen in the office. The office is actually a front for a gambling ring they run. Dick tells them she is just there to listen to people talk and that she is not too bright anyway she will never know what is going on. He tells Ellen not to go into the “conference room” which is his booking room.

            All the people that had been in the office had been kicked out of their homes because the rent was too high. Ellen’s uncle is a judge and she goes to bring him his lunch one day. She tells him she thinks it is awful what is happening to the people who come into the office. She thinks Dick will take care of the problem.

            An ex-girlfriend of Dick’s named Peggy comes into the office. She thinks Dick is seeing Ellen. The ex-girlfriend wants Dick to come back to the gambling business with her but he tells her he likes being in a small town.

            Ellen brings Ralph around to Dick’s office to talk about a housing deal. Dick, Timothy, and Kilcoyne get nervous with the DA around. After they leave Dick comes up with an idea to just overwhelm Ellen with work that he knows she cannot handle. Eventually he gets her to go by kissing her. On the bus home Ellen sees some of the people who have come into the office for the housing on the bus. They tell her to go back and fight for them. She goes back and tells Dick she is fighting until the end for the housing and that if any of them try to hit on her she will have her uncle install a police officer at her desk.

            Peggy comes back to see Dick to place a large bet and leaves it with Ellen who does not get it to Dick until a half hour before the race. Now Timothy and Kilcoyne have to make their own race to unload a bet that Dick cannot handle. The horse that Peggy bet on won the race but they cannot pay her. She tells Dick to settle it by taking her out to dinner. He tells Ellen to make the reservations. That night Ellen has Ralph take her to the same place Dick had her make the reservations to. She goes up to Dick and tells him she has to deposit the money the people gave the company for their homes. Dick had planned to use that money to pay Peggy back.

            Dick winds up handing the development deal over to Ellen so that he, Timothy, and Kilcoyne can disappear. Ellen takes it over and the project does not go too well. It quickly runs out of money and it has to be shut down. Everyone, including Ellen, is mad at Dick.

            Peggy asks Dick to come back to the organization saying she will forget the fifty thousand from the race. Dick takes her up on the offer. He goes back to the business and to Ellen. They wind up bribing the foreman to come back to the job and do the materials and job cheaply. To get the workers to move faster he makes a bet with the workers to see who can finish the houses the quickest.

            At the office Ellen answers the phones in the conference room where she was not supposed to be while Dick is out. She finds out he is a bookie. She cannot report Dick to the police because her uncle is involved with his racket.

            Ellen with the help of her uncle and the police take down Peggy and get Dick out of the racket he got himself into.

            Miss Grant Takes Richmond was a cute film. For Lucille Ball this is the type of role I like seeing her in. She was funny but not outrageous like she was on I Love Lucy. William Holden was adorable. I like how Ball’s character flustered his character. Miss Grant Takes Richmond, as I said, was cute but it was not that great. I suggest watching it only if you are a fan of either William Holden or Lucille Ball.