Dreams in the Witch House

Produced under the 'Masters of Horror' label,'Dreams in the Witch House' , is an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. Walter Gilman, a student at Miskatonic University studying quantum physics and non-euclidean geometry, rents a room in an ancient house that was the home of a woman accused of being a witch. Over the years inhabitants of the house have died in mysterious ways. The room Gilman rents out is of interest to him because the room's proportions are strange. In the story the walls and ceiling meet in an odd way. While Gilman is at first nervous about staying in the house (and the room in particular), the room's strange geometry begins to inspire him to create new theories about the intersection of various planes of existence.

Gilman begins to have strange dreams in which he is flying through pulsating vortices of color, accompanied by geometric shapes that appear to be sentient. Upon waking Gilman pens theories that impress his professors. He theorizes that this mathematical knowledge would enable someone to move through both time and space, possibly even allowing a person to enter other dimensions. What was commonly thought of as 'magic' could have been very advanced mathematics.

As the story progresses it becomes evident that the witch is not dead, having discovered these mathematical principles more than 300 years ago, she has moved herself into a dimension in which time does not pass in the usual way, using the strangely shaped interior of the room as a portal to and from this alternate plane. Gilman slowly falls under the witch's influence, dreaming that he is being enlisted to perform a ghoulish, abominable black sabbath rite against his will. One night Gilman dreams of helping the old hag and her familiar (a rat with a human face named Brown Jenkin) kidnap an infant. He awakens in his room, sure it was a dream, but his feet are caked with mud. 

Will Gilman stop the witch and save the infant? The cinematic version of the story leaves out several key elements of the original story, but stays true to the overall theme. In the film Gilman has no vivid dream experiences of 'traveling' through dimensions, but he does dream of the witch. Instead of going on a midnight jaunt with the witch and her familiar (which was not very convincing - just a closeup of a guy in a rat mask) the infant of another tenant (Gilman's love interest) is imperiled.

Overall, 'Dreams in the Witch House' is not terrifying, but has some scary moments, standing out as a relatively faithful adaptation of Lovecraft's original short story. I would recommend it as a rental. It has all the essentials of a good Lovecraftian story: madness, evil, and magic.