Wait Until Dark (film)

Wait Until Dark
theatrical release poster
Directed by	Terence Young
Produced by	Mel Ferrer
Screenplay by	Robert Carrington Jane-Howard Carrington
Based on	Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott
Starring	Audrey Hepburn Alan Arkin Richard Crenna
Music by	Henry Mancini
Cinematography	Charles Lang
Edited by	Gene Milford
Production company	Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release dates	October 26, 1967 (1967-10-26) (Limited release)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3 million[1]
Box office	$17,550,741[2]

Wait Until Dark is a 1967 psychological horror thriller film directed by Terence Young and produced by Mel Ferrer.^[3] It stars Audrey Hepburn as a young blind woman, Alan Arkin as a violent criminal searching for some drugs, and Richard Crenna as another criminal, supported by Jack Weston, Julie Herrod, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.. The screenplay by Robert Carrington and Jane-Howard Carrington is based on the 1966 play by Frederick Knott.

Audrey Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1967. Zimbalist was nominated for a Golden Globe in the supporting category. The film is ranked #55 on AFI's 2001 100 Years…100 Thrills list, and its climax is ranked tenth on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.^[4]

Plot

A woman named Lisa (Samantha Jones) takes a flight from Montreal to New York City, smuggling bags of heroin sewn inside an old-fashioned doll. When she disembarks, Lisa becomes worried upon seeing a man watching her and gives the doll to a fellow passenger, professional photographer Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), for safekeeping. Lisa is roughly escorted away by the man. Later, when Lisa calls Sam about the doll, he and his wife Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who is blind from an auto accident, are unable to find it.

A few days later, con artists Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston) arrive at Sam and Susy's apartment, believing it to be Lisa's. Harry Roat, Jr. (Alan Arkin), the man who met Lisa at the airport, arrives to persuade Talman and Carlino to help him find the doll. After the con men discover Lisa's body hanging in a garment bag, Roat blackmails them into helping him dispose of the body. Roat also offers to cut them into the drug profits if they help him find the doll. Susy comes home briefly and is observed by the men, who stay silent and undetected.

The next day, Roat sends Sam on a wild goose chase photography assignment to Asbury Park, New Jersey. Once Susy is alone, the criminals begin an elaborate con game: Mike poses as a friend of Sam's, Carlino poses as a policeman, and Roat poses as an old man and then his son. Using first an innocuous story about Sam and the doll, then a darker one implying that Lisa has been murdered and that Sam will be suspected, the men persuade Susy to help them find the doll. Mike gives her the number for the phone booth across the street as his own after falsely warning her of a police car stationed outside.

During this time, Susy grows suspicious of Carlino and Roat. Gloria (Julie Herrod), a girl who lives upstairs and sometimes enters Susy's apartment without her noticing, sneaks in to return the doll and tells Susy that there is no police car outside. Wanting to confirm Susy's suspicions, the two agree to have Gloria watch the phone booth and send a signal if it's in use.

On Carlino's next visit, after he calls Roat at the phone booth, Gloria sends Susy the telephone signal, and she sends the signal a second time after Susy calls Mike to tell him she has the doll. Finally realizing that Mike, too, is a criminal, Susy hides the doll. When he walks in with Carlino and Roat following quietly, she tells him that the doll is at Sam's studio. The three leave after Roat cuts the telephone cord.

While Roat and Mike walk to Sam's studio to look for the doll, Carlino stays behind to stand guard outside the apartment building. Susy sends Gloria to the bus station to wait for Sam. When Susy discovers that the telephone cord has been cut, she prepares to defend herself when the men return by putting the criminals in the dark along with her, breaking all the bulbs in the apartment's light fixtures except for the one in Sam's photography 'safe light'. She also pours a chemical into a bowl. When Mike returns, he realizes that she knows the truth and demands the doll, but she refuses to cooperate. Mike has spent more time than the others with Susy, and he has come to admire her for her quiet strength and ability to stand up to the three of them, despite her disability. He admits to her that he and his confederates are part of a criminal plot and that Sam, as Susy suspected, is innocent of any involvement, while Roat is a particular danger. Mike assures Susy that she does not need to worry about Roat, as he has sent Carlino to kill him. However, having anticipated their plan, Roat has killed Carlino instead, and, as Mike prepares to leave, Roat stabs him in the back.

Intent on acquiring the doll, Roat chains the door shut in the dark apartment, pours gasoline on the floor, and sets a piece of newspaper on fire. Susy finally agrees to give him the doll, and he puts out the fire. Susy throws the chemical at Roat's face and desperately unplugs the 'safe light' while Roat throws his knife at her, which misses and embeds itself in the wall as the apartment is plunged into darkness. Roat lights a match but hastily puts it out when Susy, having found the gasoline, starts splashing it in his direction and onto him. But the battle ends when Roat obtains light by opening the refrigerator, whose door he props open with a rag in the hinge. Susy, hearing the refrigerator come on, and weeping as she realizes that she has lost the battle, pulls the doll out from its hiding place and hands it to him. While Roat cuts open the doll and gloats over the treasure inside, Susy is able, unnoticed by him, to arm herself with a large kitchen knife. Roat then pushes Susy towards the bedroom and pins her to the wall (presumably to rape her). Susy stabs Roat who collapses, seriously wounded. She flees but is unable to escape through the chained door. She stumbles across the floor toward the kitchen window to scream for help, but Roat unexpectedly leaps up from the floor and grabs her ankle. Screaming, Susy wrenches free, but the dying Roat doggedly pursues her, using the knife with which she stabbed him to drag himself across the floor. Susy conceals herself behind the refrigerator door, as she is unable to close it. Just as he stands to stab her, Susy finds the refrigerator cord and unplugs it. Then screen is black and we hear Susy scream. the police arrive with Sam and Gloria. Sam finds light bulbs and plugs in a few lights. Susy is unharmed behind the refrigerator door. She walks to and embraces Sam, crying. Roat is dead.

Cast

• Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix
• Alan Arkin as Roat, Harry Roat Jr., and Harry Roat Sr.
• Richard Crenna as Mike Talman
• Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Sam Hendrix
• Jack Weston as Carlino
• Samantha Jones as Lisa
• Julie Herrod as Gloria

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of the film, composed by Henry Mancini, was adapted to the film's climax: dark, oppressive and terrifying. Mancini combined with the orchestra two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart, melodic instruments—sitar, electric harpsichord, electric guitar, and a whistler in the main title (a haunting, minor-mode melody in the style of Experiment in Terror). Mancini also composed an alternate main theme that was not used in the film and can be found as "Henry Mancini Alternate Main Title".

Exhibition

To immerse viewers in the suspense of the climactic scene, movie theater owners dimmed their lights to the legal limits, and then turned them off, one by one, as each light bulb was smashed on-screen, until the audiences were in complete darkness.

Reception

The film was one of the most popular of its year, earning North American rentals of $7,350,000.^[6]

Bosley Crowther called it a "barefaced melodrama, without character revelation of any sort, outside of the demonstration of a person with the fortitude to overcome an infirmity"; he liked Hepburn's performance, saying "the sweetness with which Miss Hepburn plays the poignant role, the quickness with which she changes and the skill with which she manifests terror attract sympathy and anxiety to her and give her genuine solidity in the final scenes".^[7]

Time magazine said the film had a "better scenario, set and cast" than the play's Broadway production that preceded it, and while "the story is as full of holes as a kitchen colander", "Hepburn's honest, posture-free performance helps to suspend the audience's disbelief" and she is "immensely aided by the heavies: Jack Weston, Richard Crenna, and Alan Arkin....With virtuosity, Hepburn and Arkin collaborate to revive an old theme—The-Helpless-Girl-Against-the-Odds—that has been out of fashion since Dorothy McGuire and Barbara Stanwyck screamed for help in The Spiral Staircase and Sorry, Wrong Number.^[8]

Roger Ebert gave the movie three and a half stars and wrote "Miss Hepburn is perhaps too simple and trusting, and Alan Arkin (as a sadistic killer) is not particularly convincing in an exaggerated performance. But there are some nice, juicy passages of terror (including that famous moment when every adolescent girl in the theater screams), and after a slow start the plot does seduce you".^[9]

The film ranked tenth on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for its riveting climax.^[10]

Accolades

American Film Institute recognition

• 2001 – AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills – #55
• 2003 – AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Susy Hendrix – Nominated Hero

See also

• List of American films of 1967
• List of films featuring home invasions

References

External links

• Wait Until Dark at the Internet Movie Database
• Wait Until Dark at Rotten Tomatoes
• Wait Until Dark at the TCM Movie Database, including an article with a plot summary and behind-the-scene details
• Wait Until Dark at AllMovie