Wait Until Dark
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Movie Reviews of Wait Until Dark
Movie Review: Audrey Hepburn was awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
If you want to see a great suspense thriller, Wait Until Dark (1967) is it. This classic stars Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Samantha Jones, Jack Weston, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and Julie Herrod. Basically, the movie is about heroin that is smuggled inside a doll at a Montreal airport. When a con woman, Lisa (Samantha Jones), notices a man spying on her, she gives the doll to a total stranger named Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist). Hendrix is a photographer who has a blind wife named Susy (Audrey Hepburn). The heroin-filled doll ends up at this couple's residence in New York City. Some con men try to take advantage of the fact that Susy is blind and do everything they can think of to get the doll from her. Do they get the doll?
The music by Henry Mancini is perfect for this '60s suspense thriller about drugs. The instruments seem to be a little out of tune and the music off key. It fits the atmosphere perfectly.
I thought Audrey Hepburn played her role brilliantly. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. She was a great actress. She was pretty and cute all in one, an unbeatable combination.
This DVD is in widescreen format. The extras include a short 8-minute feature called Take A Look In The Dark, where Alan Arkin and producer Mel Ferrer (Audrey Hepburn's real life husband at the time) talk about how the movie was made. A feature called Stage Frantics describes the transformation from a stage play to a movie. You can read the "Warning" word-for-word that movie theaters posted about what was going to happen in the closing minutes of the movie. It's quite interesting and a sign of the time period this movie was made in.
I highly recommend this movie to fans of suspense thrillers and fans of Audrey Hepburn.
Movie Review: "The blinds moving up and down. . . the squeaking shoes. . .
Summary: 5 Stars
...and then the knife whistling past her ear. . . "At the ripe old age of 38, Audrey Hepburn proved that she had aged like fine wine in Terrence Young's "Wait Until Dark", for which she earned her fifth, and last, Oscar nomination. Despite obviously being based on the long-running Broadway play; as the majority of the story takes place in an apartment and there are few characters; it translates surprisingly well onto screen and is remarkably intriguing and suspenseful. Alan Arkin, who plays one of the vilest villains of 60's cinema, Richard Crenna, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. make up the stellar supporting cast and all turn in excellent performances.
The sheer terror "Wait Until Dark" inflicts upon its audience comes from the filmmakers ability to place us in Suzy's shoes. The very idea of being blind and trapped in an apartment and horribly alone even though you are in one of the most densely populated areas of the world, just plains scares me. The nail-biting climax has some truly classic moments in it (who knew Alan Arkin was such a gymnast?) and will stick with you long after the film is over.
As always, Audrey is simply perfection. Charming and beautiful even in the most unflattering situations, she yet again proves her star power. The constant distress and anguish Audrey portrays onscreen is achingly real, and unfortunately, not very far from the truth. She was suffering from anorexia and marriage troubles with the producer of the film, Mel Ferrer, throughout the entire shoot. One can only imagine how draining it must have been for her to be required to be screaming and crying the whole shoot while dealing with these problems. Her Oscar nomination was most certainly deserved!
Movie Review: Edge Of Your Seat ***Thriller***!
Summary: 5 Stars
WAIT UNTIL DARK has become one of my favorite thriller movies next to movies like Dressed to Kill.
In it, Audrey Hepburn plays a woman who is learning to live life as a blind person after an accident took her sight. She becomes involved with three shady characters after her husband gets a doll from a woman he met on a flight back home, and now the doll is missing. Anyway, the men want the doll back and will stop at nothing to get it and drive poor Audrey to the brink of insanity!
Hepburn plays the role convincingly and the cinematography is really cool. There are moments when there's nothing but pitch-blackness on the screen and so you get a sense of what the main character must be experiencing as she's being terrorized by these thugs!
The special features include:
Featurette--"A Look In The Dark"--8:35-minute
interview with Alan Arkin, who plays the sadistic "Roat," and producer Mel Ferrer, who was married to Hepburn at the time.
Theatrical Trailer & Warning--
warning is a voice-over with text that tells audience members not to light up cigarettes in the movie house (wow, they smoked inside the theater back then!)during the pitch dark scenes so it wouldn't take away from the scene.
WAIT UNTIL DARK is a must see for fans of scary movies and of course, Hepburn fans.
Movie Review: Truly Terrifying!
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on Frederick Knott's Broadway hit, Wait Until Dark is a chilling film, even by today's standards. This is a masterfully crafted thriller about three deranged crooks who manipulate a blind woman to recover their lost smuggled goods. Audrey Hepburn is fantastic as Suzy, in her Oscar nominated role, showing us a fairly realistic portrait of a fragile woman coping with her dark new world. She manages to garner our sympathy, especially with Efrem Zimbalist Jr's demanding husband watching her every move.
Alan Arkin is equally terrific, making a terrifying villain.
Wait Until Dark manages to create a paranoid environment devoid of any human life. The apartment building Suzy lives in is perpetually empty; Suzy's husband, Sam, leaves her on her own for most of the day, and the dorky young girl upstairs is apparently motherless most of the time. The cave-like arches of the apartment has an unsettling effect of positioning Hepburn in a nondescript underground (the windows only look out on the feet of passersby, emphasizing Suzy's disconnect from her neighborhood). It all creeps up on the audience, making for a suspenseful, claustrophobic and effective shocker. I literally could not breathe during the film's final ten minutes.
Definitely wait until dark and watch it with someone who likes to scream. This is a true nail-biter if there ever was one.
Movie Review: WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Summary: 5 Stars
Few actresses have lit up the screen in the same fashion as the late Audrey Hepburn. In this 1967 thriller (her last Oscar nomination), she plays a blind woman who finds herself terrorized by a trio of men looking for a heroin-stuffed doll.Relying on pure psychological suspense as opposed to gore and violence, WAIT UNTIL DARK is still a powerful movie. Miss Hepburn is perfect for the role---she seems so frail, and yet there is an inner strength that comes to her aid in the final moments of the film. She lost the Oscar that year to another Hepburn (Katherine in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"), and it just goes to show how Oscar at times relies more on sentimentality than the actual power of a performance.
Richard Crenna eschewed his good guy roles by playing Mike Talman, one of the cons who does appreciate Suzie's intelligence. Jack Weston, a great comic actor, also goes for more visceral drama, and his performance as the buffoon is right on target. And what about Mr. Alan Arkin? His cold, insensitive evil is just right!!! Little Julie Herrod as Gloria also does a credible job.
Terence Young's direction is tight and Henry Mancini's impeccable music also heightens the suspense.
WAIT UNTIL DARK is a classic thriller, and one of Miss Hepburn's finest moments.