Twilight Zone - Perchance to Dream *

I was putting together my IMDb user review for this TZ episode when I was realizing how Florey, the director of this episode (and an early favorite of mine featuring the great Bela Lugosi in Murders of the Rue Morgue, and the genius whose storyboards, divine Gothic beauties, inspired Whale's own vision of Frankenstein), used dreams as the means to free himself from the confines of literal storytelling, predating Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street 25 years, as his tormented protagonist, played by Richard Conte, dies in his sleep, jumping out a window when he experiences a dream within a dream that is all to real, seeing a female figure that led him on a "final ride" at an imagined carnival roller coaster in the form of a seductive "cat dancer". Larch as the psychiatrist tries to encourage his potential patient to speak openly about what is causing him to purposely avoid sleep for days, especially about how he allowed his imagination from a child (a boat in a painting that moves at his will after some time staring at it) to conjure a back seat perpetrator that didn't exist resulting in a car wreck. A heart condition that could kill him with even the slightest jolt or shock threatened to end Conte so his avoiding any terrors of the mind was a must. Florey gets to play when using the dreams of the lead, fogging up the lens, distorting the camera, featuring this carnival (...of the damned) that haunts Conte as he eventually tries to escape its confines. Ultimately Conte cannot with Larch finding his patient having "died in his sleep". Lloyd as the lady in his dreams and as Larch's secretary provides enough incentive to send Conte off the deep end. While the dream within a dream plot has been overused since, I think it is quite well applied in this episode due to the main character's condition.