The Dream Theatre presents... 'Welcome to the House of Fun'

 (originally published in 2nd July, 2018)

Had a weirdly detailed dream narrative in which a group of strangers woke up in a sprawling mansion house. Doors and corridors extended off in all directions but there didn’t appear to be any windows or ways out. At this point, it felt like an episode of a TV show from the late 60’s or early 70’s. Kind of ‘Twilight Zone’-ish. As the strangers began talking, they began to realize that they had all had the misfortune of becoming an inconvenience to Horatio Vines, a brilliant but deranged criminal mastermind of the Vincent Price school. As the strangers made introductions, it became apparent that the master criminal had decided to ‘clean house’ by bringing together all of his enemies in one place where he could confine them with a view to finishing them off with an array of deathtraps. The strangers split up into small groups to explore including a number of detective dilettantes, a crusading newspaper publisher and his star reporter, an incorruptible homicide detective and a number of friends, associates and assorted hangers-on.

Early on a brass plaque was discovered, welcoming the Doctor’s guests in the name of his associate, the fiendish artificier of murder, Doctor Fun. (In my head, I recalled that Doctor Fun started out as a standard-issue Yellow Peril-type villain in his own series of books - though there were hints that he wasn’t actually Asian, but used disguise and misdirection to conceal a double identity, a nod to several Victorian-era “Chinese” Magicians who were actually disguised white guys), but in one of the latter chapters, he had been grievously injured and had become a lieutenant of sorts to Vines. It felt as though a character from an American weird menace pulp series had been revived as a Sexton Blake villain... which I recall being kind of neat.) The good doctor had, the plaque said, outdone himself with a wide variety of amusements, entertainments and diversions, tailor-made to provide days, weeks or even months of excitement for Vines’ guests. It is, it continued, deeply desired that they should enjoy their stay, because it would last for the remainder of their lives. The mansion proved to be extremely sprawling, containing a conservatory willed with plants - carnivorous, where they weren’t extremely toxic. There was an indoor zoo - in which all the animals were of course, deadly in the extreme. Someone assumed that there would be a series of triggers designed to either release the animals, or dump visitors into the enclosures. One of the guests, on spotting a series of variously-sized enclosures containing spiders of various types commented that the Doctor was a fan of arachnida, and she had encountered specially-bred spiders the size of full-grown labradors in the past. Everything could be a deathtrap... spiral staircases, indoor fountains, light-switches, sconces, furniture... and tempers began to fray. “Could you stop touching books on the bookshelf or flicking lightswitches?” Several deathtraps were found and dealt with and defeated, but I recalled that this was typical of Doctor Fun, that he’d hide one deathtrap behind another. You deactivate the poison dart trap and assume that that’s it, which means the acid spray gets you... that kind of thing.

At one point, a small group finds an open door and says, “There ya go. I’m leaving.” I switch to the viewpoint of a group member, a hard-boiled black detective wearing a leather jacket and a beat-up cowboy hat (played in this case by Steven Williams from ‘21 Jump Street’ and ‘The X-Files’). The others argue fiercely and try to forcibly restrain me, but I’m determined. “This is how he works. He’ll wind you up until you’re terrified of your own shadow and then leave you an open door. You’ll be so shit-scared that you won’t use it. That’s how Doctor Fun operates. He’ll transform you into your own jailer. Well, fuck that.” I walk out into a darkened city street and look back. The others are standing there in the doorway, stricken with horror but unable to leave. They’re doomed now. I get a kind of final scene from ‘Godfather 2’ vibe from the whole thing.

I got a series of Dr.Phibes-esque murder scenes in a kind of montage. I remember someone being impaled by a bunch swords wielded by empty suits of armour, someone drowning in an indoor pool, there’s someone in a comfortable-looking reading chair with a book open on their lap and a white foam on their lips, their dead eyes open and staring, a point of view shot of people on a lower-level being stalked by a tiger on an upstairs landing, and a shot of people in a basement draped in spiderwebs as a shadowy figure the size of a small car raises up behind them... The final shot is an exterior shot of the mansion - all is still - as the sun rises.

And then, there’s a really bizarre post-credits sequence as I (as the private eye) and driving a beat-up old car along a narrow track in a thick forested area. I get out as the road ends and walk into the woods, where I come across a cave. Inside the cave is a family of Sasquatch. I take off my hat and coat and walk over to the largest male, nodding. “I’m sorry, sir. I thought I had a promising lead, but it was a trap. Still, my promise stands. I WILL find your daughter.” There’s a shot of the private eye walking out of the cave shrugging on his coat and putting on his hat. He has a look of grim determination. When he says he’s gonna do something, he means it... and when William Everett “Bass” Reeves III gets onto a trail, there’s no one alive who can shake him off it.

(And featuring Steven Williams as William Everett "Bass" Reeves III)

So yeah... what started out as a Twilight Zone episode based on Vincent Price supervillain movies featuring a pulp Yellow Peril version of Erik the Opera Ghost doing “Who Is Killing The Great Detectives” (with a giant spider) turned into a 1970’s contemporary Western series about the monster-hunting descendant of Bass Reeves working for a family of Sasquatch to find their missing daughter... because of course it did.

What the fuck, my brain?