Wait Until Dark
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Movie Reviews of Wait Until Dark
Movie Review: Audrey Hepburn as the world's champion blind lady
Summary: 5 Stars
That's what Audrey Hepburn plays in Wait Until Dark, based on the play by Frederick Knott, the genius behind Dial M For Murder. Her role as Suzy Hendrix is one of the most challenging, as she played a physically handicapped person. She prepared by going to the Lighthouse for the Blind academy in Manhattan, and spent time with a student, who showed how she found her way around a room. Audrey also took Braille lessons, covering her eyes with black shields, walking with a stick, and applying makeup without a mirror. Then there were the contact lens, used to simulate the blank look conveyed by blind people. Given the calibre of this movie, Ms. Hepburn passes with flying colours.
Now, for the World's Champion Blind Lady's Story. Suzy, who lost her sight in an accident, becomes the unwitting pawn by three crooks desperate to regain a doll her husband was given for safekeeping by a blonde at an airport. Seems that Lisa, the blonde, was smuggling heroin in the doll, trying to double cross Roat, the ringleader of the crooks, and was murdered for her duplicity. Roat blackmails his reluctant cohorts, Mike Talman and Carlino, into helping him, but offers them $2,000 each to help him search for the doll.
Mike passes himself as a Marine buddy of her husband Sam and wins her confidence. All the while, a large VW van parked across the street by the phone booth serves as their center of operations. Roat-played to slimy perfection by Alan Arkin, whose favourite toy is a knife named Geraldine, is quite the mastermind. He arranges things so Sam has to go to Asbury Park for an all-day photo job so that he and his cohorts can come and go to the Hendrix's flat under various pretences to search for the doll, and gain information from our heroine. At one point, he disguises himself as his own father, breaks into Suzy's house on the pretence of thinking his daughter-in-law is having an affair with a photographer named Sam Hunt. That leads to Talman, a convenient witness, calling for the police, actually Carlino at the phone booth, posing as a police sergeant. Roat himself gives Suzy a half-truth of the story, mentioning a doll. Suzy does remember Sam bringing home a doll he was looking after, but the doll has mysteriously vanished.
The crooks are thus desperate to find the doll and Suzy is desperate to clear her husband. It doesn't take her long to figure out that a missing woman found murdered was the same woman who passed the doll to Sam, and that Sam will be implicated unless the doll is found. This challenge exemplifies Sam's pushing Suzy to be the world's champion blind lady, trying to be more self-reliant, and as much of her former self while she still had her sight.
That leads to a scene where she drops a salt shaker and uses her hand in a circular sweeping motion to find it. All the while, she tells Sam she doesn't like Gloria, a pouty bespectacled teenager named Gloria, whose family life is less than stable. She says she prefers a dog, but as Sam says, dogs can't go shopping.
At one point, Suzy muses that there are some things she wants to do, such as pick out wallpaper or colours for the house, something she can never do with this dark brown she constantly sees. Yet her sense of hearing has improved. She notes that Mr. Roat and his father's shoes had the same new shoe squeak. She also remarks to Gloria that Carlino and Roat were playing with the blinds.
Most of the film takes place in Suzy's apartment, remaining true to its stage origins. And Wait Until Dark is a well-paced thriller that comes alive when Suzy finally figures things out, highlighted by a climactic gripping scene in the near dark of the flat, with Suzy being terrorized by the odious Roat.
"She is really something," Mike says of her at one point, and Suzy is a heroine to root for. Nominated for but losing the Best Actress award, this was Hepburn's last great film and last Oscar nomination. It marked the end of an era as well as the end of her marriage to Mel Ferrer, who produced this film, and a nine year hiatus broken by Robin and Marian.
Movie Review: The Absolutely Best Thriller Of All Time, Bar None: Experience The Fear--Watch It In The Dark!
Summary: 5 Stars
While there are many excellent reviews for "Wait Until Dark," now that I own the DVD, I feel compelled to reiterate for others my deep appreciation and "thrill" for this absolutely wonderful film.
As a teenager I was never a fan of Audrey Hepburn--until I saw "Wait Until Dark!" Like many teenagers of the time, one of my favorite genres was "horror/thriller" movies like "Psycho" (1960), "The Birds" (1963), "Comedy of Terror" (1964), and "Rosemary's Baby" (1968). While "Jaws" (1975), "Alien" (1979), "The Shining" (1980), and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) would follow as audience favorites, for my money "Wait Until Dark" is the zenith of this genre. While I can remember other films, I will never forget "Wait Until Dark." It is literally the only film that I have ever "jumped" in surprise while watching it. I will never forget the "darkness" of the theater, the tension of the crowd, the sounds and screams, the audience on the edge of their seats--many ducking down or closing their eyes in fear--and the shear excitement of the experience of "waiting" and watching "Wait Until Dark."
While watching "Wait Until Dark" on a television set is nothing like experiencing it at the theater, making the room as dark as possible and using headphones can make a close approximation. I have sworn for 41 years that I would never watch "Wait Until Dark" again because I thought I could only truly experience it one time; but when the DVD went on sale I could not resist the temptation--and I am glad I did. I was totally wrong. It still thrills me, even though I know what is going to happen. The only complaints I have are that the DVD "extras" are lacking, and the old cardboard storage box is a disgrace.
"Wait Until Dark," for those who don't know, was originally a Broadway production, directed by Arthur Penn, which opened on February 2, 1966. Warner Brothers-Seven Arts purchased the rights shortly after, and quickly brought the production to the "big screen." The script was adapted by Robert Howard-Carrington and Terence Young directed the film. Warner Brothers assembled an incredible cast that included outstanding performances by Audrey Hepburn, Richard Crenna, Alan Arkin, and Jack Weston. Most theaters went along with the productions intriguing concept: "In an effort to duplicate the suspense on screen, movie theaters dimmed their lights to their legal limits, then turned off one by one until each light on-screen was shattered, resulting in the theater being plunged into complete darkness." And it worked like a charm!
Of interest to me, from the "extras" was learning that a Broadway revival directed by Leonard Foglia, which opened on April 5, 1998 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, amassed a nearly equally amazing cast that included Marisa Tomei, Quentin Tarantino, and Stephen Lang in the lead roles. I have never really been one for stage productions, but this certainly would have been once I would have liked to have seen.
If this review was not helpful to you, I would appreciate learning the reason(s) so I can improve my reviews. My goal is to provide help to potential buyers, not get into any arguments. So, if you only disagree with my opinion, could you please say so in the comments and not indicate that the review was not helpful. Thanks.
Movie Review: Genuinely scary, and one of Hepburn's finest performances
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the last film that Audrey Hepburn made before she retired at age 38, deciding to quit while she was still on top. Although she later made ROBIN AND MARIAN with Sean Connery, and made a few later appearances in later films, this was the end of her star career. Appropriately, it is one of her very greatest performances, with her skills as an actress, if anything, continuing to grow. Audrey plays a woman left alone in her apartment who is preyed on by three men attempting to recover a doll filled with narcotics her husband has accidently acquired. The cast carries this film. Audrey Hepburn is so good that it would have succeeded regardless of what anyone else in the film had done. As a recently blinded person learning to cope with her new condition, she is utterly convincing. She manages to persuade completely the viewer that she really is quite vulnerable yet completely unwilling to give in to her situation. Alan Arkin, in one of his earliest film roles and his first since his Oscar nominated performance in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!, gives a chilling performance as Roat, the leader of the bad guys. It was interesting casting, since Arkin was primarily a comedian, one of the founders of the Second City comedy troupe. It is one of the finest performances of his career. Richard Crenna was primarily known as a TV performer at the time, having been a regular on two of the most successful shows of all time, OUR MISS BROOKS and THE REAL McCOYS. He is very effective as the con artist who comes to like and admire his would-be victim.
It is not a perfect film. If one didn't already know that it had been a stage play, any perceptive viewer would be able to tell by watching. It is a profoundly "stagey" production, and the way the various characters traipse in and out of her apartment is a bit hard to swallow at times. It feels too much like characters walking on and off stage in a theater. Still, the acting is so exceptional and the situation so compelling that it is easy to cut the film a lot of slack. I will add that the last fifteen or twenty seconds of the film are a little off putting. It functions on a symbolic level, but it unsatisfying emotionally. I wanted to scream: "Just go give the woman a hug, you jerk!"
The last thirty minutes of the film really are about as scary on a psychological level as anything Hollywood has produced. When it was originally shown in theaters, in the scene where Audrey Hepburn begins breaking all the light bulbs in her apartment, the theater would either darken or dim the lights in the house, with each bulb she would shatter. In the spirit of that, I definitely recommend watching this one in a darkened house.
Movie Review: Audrey turns the tables on Theives
Summary: 5 Stars
Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist jr.) is traveling home from Quebec when a young woman asks him to take a doll. (You don't know why because the scene is muted.) What Sam doesn't know is the doll contains drugs.
Sam has misplaced the doll. So, Harry Roat, jr. (Alan Arkin), has been "asked" by Lisa to collect the doll with the help of her expartners Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston). But when Talmund finds a dead Lisa in the closet, Harry's real scheme comes to light.
Harry's plan begins by sending Sam out to Scarsdale for a bogus photo assignment leaving his blind wife Susy (Audrey Hepburn) alone in the apartment. Next Mike arrives at the apartment and tells Susy that he is Sam's old Marine buddy. Roat breaks in as an old man claiming Sam is having an affair with his daughter in law. Mike "calls" the police and Carlino arrives. Carlino lets drop that there was a doll associated with a dead woman. Roat comes back as himself and explains that his father thinks his wife Lisa is having an affair with a photographer that she met in Quebec. The photographer gave her a doll (the missing doll). Susy starts to suspect that the police think that Sam is involved in Lisa's murder.
But what the gang don't take into consideration is that Susy's heightened other senses. Susy quickly puts things together. When Roat realizes she is ahead of him he increase the heat which becomes a game of cat and mouse in which the mouse becomes the cat.
This is a great thriller. The direction is fast paced and doesn't try to keep the audience one step behind. Audrey Hepburn give what will be one of her last great performances. Alan Arkin is truly menacing as Harry Roat.
If you dare watch this with the lights out!
DVD EXTRAS:
A Look in the Dark - A nine minute featurette with Alan Arkin talking about his character Harry Roat. and Mel Ferrer discussing his wife Audrey Hepburn and Rcihard Crenna.
Stage Frantics - A written piece that discusses the play and playwright's other hit Dial M for Murder.
Movie Review: THE WORLD'S CHAMPION BLIND LADY....
Summary: 5 Stars
Audrey Hepburn is superb as Susie Hendrix, a recently blinded woman in New York whose photographer husband is frequently away on assignments. This leaves her on her own to fend for herself and adjust to being blind. Thugs Richard Crenna and Jack Weston invade Susie's apartment while she is in "blind school" looking for a woman accomplice they know who led them there. But it's a set-up by slimier thug Alan Arkin who has killed the woman and forces Crenna and Weston to join him in searching for a doll containing heroin that Arkin knows is in the apartment somewhere. He knows that the woman slipped it to Sam, Susie's husband, at the airport. Sam, of course, not knowing what was in it, brought it home. Susie is then subjected to dupes, harrassment and then outright terror as the trio try to retrieve the doll. A neighbor girl, Gloria, is her only aid. Yet Susie begins to rely on what she already had---her wits and her senses---to survive at the hands of Arkin, the sickest and deadlier of the trio of thugs. "Wait Until Dark" is a fine, gripping thriller that builds slowly and surely to it's terrifying climax as Susie and Roat, Jr. (Arkin) are left to square off. Arkin does some neat turns in disguises in his efforts to trick Susie. Crenna is almost likeable as the coolest of the trio while Weston is sweaty and nervous. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. ("The FBI") is OK as Sam and Julie Herrod is good as Gloria the young neighbor, a troubled girl who proves her worth to Susie. Then you have Henry Mancini's effectively suspenseful score...he did a LOT of 60's films...so this is a memorable treat as a whole. The DVD print is fine and the sound is good. But I would love to know who the smooth female vocalist is who sings the title song "Wait Until Dark" over the cast list at the end. I didn't see her credited. Film is based on Frederick Knox's famous Broadway play.