Masters of Horror/Dreams in the Witch House

Dreams in the Witch House
Season 1, Episode 2
Airdate	November 4, 2005
Written by	teleplay Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon story H.P. Lovecraft
Directed by	Stuart Gordon
← 1x01 Incident On and Off a Mountain Road	1x03 → Dance of the Dead
Masters of Horror — Season One

Dreams in the Witch House is the second episode of the first season of Masters of Horror.

A graduate student moves into an apartment in order to finish his thesis, but finds himself in increasingly unreal situations in his new home.

Cast: Ezra Godden (Walter), Campbell Lane (Masurewicz), Jay Brazeau (Dombrowski), Chelah Horsdal (Frances), David Racz (Baby Danny), Micholas Racz (Baby Danny), Yevgen Voronin (Brown Jenkin) Susanna Uchatius (Keziah Mason), Donna White (Librarian), Susan Bain (Psychologist), Terry Howson (Attendant), Anthony Harrison (Detective), David Nykl (CSI)

Plot Overview

College student Walter Gilman arrives at an old and unkempt boarding house looking for a cheap room to rent. Receiving a key from the shiftless Manager who has nothing but contempt for his tenants, he begins moving into Room 4 on the upper floor. Besides being in disrepair, Room 4 also has a corner where the sloped roof and other features join to create a strange geometry. He settles in to work on his thesis in theoretical physics and string theory.

Late at night, he is awakened to rhythmic chanting and banging coming from downstairs. Later he hears scratching in the walls that sound curiously like rats but that focuses his attention on the geometry of the corner which closely matches his own work. Before giving it much attention, he hears a loud scream from his neighbor Frances and her daughter. A large white rat is very deliberately chasing her so he scares back into the walls. The manager won't do anything about but gives him tools to fix it himself. While going up to do the job, he is stopped by an old man named Masurewicz in downstairs Room 2. He asks him if he's seen the rat, adding that it is a rat with a face, a human face. Discounting it, he repairs the rat hole in France's room before awkwardly leaving her back alone with her baby Danny.

That night, his room is bathed in a strange purple glow while he is sleeping and he awakens to find a large rat on his chest with a very human-like face named Brown Jenkin. Telling him that "she is coming. She is coming for you." He wakes screaming and chases the rat into the walls. Concerned, Frances has him over for tea while she packs. Intending to leave in the morning because she can't afford her already late rent, Walter gives her some money to give to the manager and allow her more time to find a job. Leaving her quite happy, he goes back to his room but hears the rhythmic chanting and banging. Going to Masurewicz's room, he finds him praying and repeatedly hitting his head on a chair. Talking about him finding the rat with a face, Masurewicz says that the rat is a familiar of a witch named Keziah Mason. He himself had come to this house long ago and had been forced to do terrible things under the control of the witch. The old man remains at the house to pray it doesn't happen to anyone else. Walter doesn't believe any of it and goes back to his room.

The next day, Frances is headed out to a job interview and asks Walter to watch Danny while she is out. Falling asleep while grading papers, France's room is bathed in the same purple light as before and a robed figure appears before the sleeping Walter. Waking suddenly, the figure disrobes and it's Frances naked. Following through on the dream-like fantasy, Walter begins to have sex with Frances but she grows increasingly more intense and scratches his back many times drawing blood in long claw marks. Looking again at her, she is not Frances but instead an old laughing woman. Waking strangely in his own room, he rushes across the France's door just as Frances comes back. The door locked and Danny crying, they find him okay although shaken in his crib. He thinks that he must be sleepwalking, which would explain why he woke in his own room and got the mysterious scratches on his back.

Setting up a plan to catch himself sleepwalking, he surrounds his bed with flour and goes to sleep. Waking to the sounds of rats, he finds a distinct rat trail leading under his bed. Looking under his bed, he is grabbed bodily by the hands of the witch and is instantly in a strange attic-like location. Lit with candles, the Witch shows him an ornate blank book and gives him a quill pen. Brown Jenkin tells him to sign and bites into his wrist, drenching the book in blood. Under the constant urging of the rat and the witch he wakes screaming in an odd room. In front of him is the book, not blank but filled with diagrams and ritual drawing. Illustrating both the witch and Brown Jenkin, the book also details a ritual for killing a child with an ornate dagger and draining its blood into a chalice. He is stopped by an angry librarian who calls the book the Necronomicon.

Realizing the danger, he rushes forward and warns Frances that Danny is in danger and that he is the source of the threat. Not making sense, she gets him out of her room but doesn't recognize how serious it all is. Back in his room, Masurewicz visits and warns Walter. Walter suggests that the odd corner is a method for passing through multiple dimensions, using the idea that String Theory's membranes allow someone to pass to another universe by finding the right intersect. The man tells him that trying to stop her will do no good and confesses to having been used by the witch to kill children himself, showing the same scratches on his back as Walter. He gives him a cross as a method of protection.

Not heeding the old man's warning, Walter hammers through the wall and gets into the crawlspace beyond. Inside, he finds the skeletal remains of innumerable children. Driven forward by the voice of Brown Jenkin, he gets into a larger room beyond and finds Danny caged. The witch, controlling his every move, has him pick up an ornate dagger. Approaching Danny, Walter is compelled to break the skin at the urging of the witch and Brown Jenkin. Finally able to overpower his own hand, he turns the dagger on the witch. Struggling and dropping the knife, he gouges out the witch's eyes and then uses the cross as a garrote to strangle the witch. Grabbing Danny, he breaks through the wall and puts him back into his crib. Collapsing on a couch, he is refocused by Danny's renewed screaming. Brown Jenkin is in the crib with Danny chewing on his neck. With Frances banging on her door, the police open the door and find Walter cradling the body of Danny overcome with grief.

Some time later, Walter is in an insane asylum. His story obviously incredible, he is diagnosed with schizophrenia. While discussing his case, the police note that they found the bodies of over 70 children. Providing credence to his case, the bodies range from 30 to 300 years old and Danny's corpse is found to have animal bites with unknown DNA. Disregarding the possibility of it being true, they leave him in the facility. Some time later, Masurewicz removes all of his crosses and, his work now done, he hangs himself. Danny's padded cell is bathed in purple light. Called by his screaming, they find him convulsing and bloody on the floor. Lifting his shirt, they find that Brown Jenkin has bored into his side and leaps out to escape.

Notes

• Deaths and Gore: Danny is bled to death by rat bites. An old man hangs himself. The witch has her eyes gouged out by thumbs and is then strangled with a necklace. Walter suffers several fingernail scratches, a few knife wounds from the blinded witch, and has his insides chewed up by Brown Jenkin before it leaps out of a hole in his abdomen.

Trivia

The Show

• Look Close: Walter's T-Shirt suggests he attends Miskatonic University, a fictional college that is a staple of many Lovecraft stories.
• Rats: Walter makes a brief reference to another of Lovecraft's short stories while he's attempting to force his landlord to do something about the rats which he can "hear in the walls." This is a reference to "The Rats in the Walls," a short story written by Lovecraft in 1923.
• Book of the Dead: The book that Walter finds in the rare book room is the Necronomicon, a fictional tome created by Lovecraft that plays a role in several of his stories and those of stories derived from his Cthulhu mythology.

Behind the Scenes

• Director: Stuart Gordon has long established a comfort for Lovecraftian tales, including the cult classic Re-Animator (from 'Herbert West - Re-Animator'), From Beyond, and Dagon. Ezra Godden was also the lead in Gordon's Dagon.

Allusions and References

• The Dreams in the Witch House: This film is adapted from a short story by H.P. Lovecraft first published in 1933 as part of the Cthulhu mythos. However, the film adaptation deviates in some significant ways from the original text, most notably being the absolute lack of elder gods and the change of the main character's fate. In the original story, after the baby is killed by the rat in the dream world, Walter is deafened by an unearthly sound and is found dead in his room with his heart eaten out the next day. There is also a distinct lack of the "black man" or travel to the surface of another planet. Additionally, several small details were changed including the sex of Frances (originally Frank), Walter's unwillingness to sign the book, and the disappearance of a background in folklore which drove his studies into the supernatural.

Quotes

• Walter: She'd wait until I was asleep. And then she'd come. She found an intersection.
  Psychologist: An intersection?
  Walter: Yes, of universes. That's how she'd get into my room and then disappear.
  Psychologist: And this woman would just disappear?
  Walter: Yes, that's what happens when you travel through space and time!
  Psychologist: And is this why you killed the baby? The evil witch cast a spell?
  Walter: No, no, I already told you I did not kill Danny!
  Psychologist: Yes, you told us. The rat did it. The rat with the human face. ...Now Walter, listen to me. You threatened the child's mother. You were caught with the body. You were covered with the child's blood. You have to face what you did.