Classic Movie Review: Wait Until Dark (1967)

Halloween is just one day away from us at the time of me posting this review, which means my series of Halloween reviews for this year is just about done. I have one more after this one that I have been planning on releasing on Halloween, then it will be on to other things. But since I have had quite a bit of fun writing these classic movie reviews, look for me to continue this in the future, especially for next Halloween since I kept thinking of more and more Halloween movies to review that I simply didn't have time to get around to. But for now we jump back to 1967, a year before the Hays Code was dissolved and replaced by the MPAA's rating system, which started out as G, M, R and X before eventually evolving into our current system of G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. "Wait Until Dark" saw director Terence Young jump into this dark, crime thriller shortly after he directed three of the first four James Bond films, "Dr. No," "From Russia with Love" and "Thunderball," and stars the ever so popular actress Audrey Hepburn and legendary actor Alan Arkin fresh off his first ever Oscar nomination for "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" in 1966. It was a popular request for me to review and is right in my wheelhouse, so let's dive in!

The premise for "Wait Until Dark" is one that we've seen a lot in Hollywood, that being criminals doing crazy things in order to get their drugs. I'm not saying that's a flaw of the movie and I won't even use the word cliche to describe it, but I'm just pointing it out. We start off with a woman named Lisa taking a doll stuffed full of heroin through the airport, after which she hands the doll off to another gentlemen. At this point of the movie, I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew something intense was about to take place due to the simple, yet creepy score that playing, thus I was immediately hooked on the film, these characters and what was about to happen. It often takes me a bit of time to get invested in a movie, so when this hooked me from the very first second, I knew I was in for a good ride. Because, yes, it's true that I tragically hadn't seen this one before I watched it earlier today. It was one of those sensations of "Where has this movie been all my life?" Moving forward, we are then introduced to Alan Arkin's villainous character of Mr. Roat, who hires two thugs named Mike Talman and Carlino to help him find this doll that he's sure is hidden somewhere in the house of the blind lady Susy Hendrix, played by Audrey Hepburn.

Yeah, that's it. Pretty simple premise here. But it certainly works. Most of the movie takes place in the home of Susy Hendrix, which makes sense since the movie is based on the play of the same name written by playwright Frederick Knott that premiered on Broadway the year before. The fact that Warner Bros. immediately purchased the movie rights for the play I'm assuming means that this was quite the popular play. I just now learned that Frederick Knott also wrote the play for "Dial M for Murder," which was adapted into Hitchcock's classic film that I really love. So this guy definitely had a knack for doing creepy, successful crime thrillers on stage. At the very least, he managed to write two of them that became pretty dang good movie thrillers. So kudos there. Speaking of Hitchcock, as I was watching "Wait Until Dark," I was definitely getting the Hitchcock vibe. In fact, whenever I watch a thriller from this era of film, I'm always comparing it to the gold standard that Hitchcock set with his thrillers. When it doesn't quite hold up to Hitchcock standards, like "The Night of the Hunter" that I reviewed earlier this month, I have to dock it a bit. That may seem unfair, but movies like "Wait Until Dark" prove to me that this standard CAN be met.

I really loved how this movie set the tone early with the score in the early sequences. I think it successfully informs the audiences that you are about to be in for a serious thrill ride, so buckle up. But after that initial sequence that puts you on edge, I love how this movie takes its time to build the suspense. The job description given by Roat to these two thugs isn't to kill Susy. It's to get the doll. If they successfully get the doll without anyone being harmed, then all is well. No one gets hurt. Everyone ends up happy. Except the doll has drugs in it, so you know this isn't going to end up happy for everyone. When a movie involves someone trying to get their drugs, the characters trying to get said drugs aren't necessarily known for their kind, compromising generosity, if you know what I mean. Alan Arkin pulls off scumbag pretty well in this right from the start. Even when he's starting with the soft and simple Plan A, you know that he has a Plan B, Plan C and Plan D up his sleeve in case things don't go smoothly. Thus we are very uneasy when he starts executing his plan, but the movie doesn't throw you right into the fire from the very beginning. We are instead placed at the edge of the fire before we slowly get pushed further and further into the flames.

While Alan Arkin does a great job of pulling off the villainous antagonist of the film, and it was certainly fun seeing him young as most of the films I've seen him in are when he's much older, the star of this movie is the woman who received the Oscar nomination for her performance. The queen of acting herself. Audrey Hepburn. This was her fifth and final Oscar nomination for her acting (she was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award following her death in 1993), having previous won for "Roman Holiday" in 1953 while also getting nominated for "Sabrina" in 1954, "The Nun's Story" in 1959 and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961. I don't know how many of those movies I've seen, so I'm not going to rank her performances, but she gives an absolutely stunning performance here in 1967. She first of all does a great job of playing a blind lady, specifically a blind lady who was more recently blinded and thus feels a bit lost in the world. I think that's much harder than playing someone who has been blind his or her whole life, such as Matt Murdock in "Daredevil" or the crazy old dude in last year's thriller "Don't Breathe." Thus this isn't an invasion movie of a blind person acts as though they can see everything. It's a much more complex performance.

As blind as she is, though, she is certainly far from dumb, gullible or completely incompetent. The suspense in the movie slowly starts building as she starts putting the pieces of the puzzle together about what's happening around her. Her husband has left and a supposed friend of his has come to visit her with a bogus story that leads to him bringing in a fake police officer. These are, of course, our two thugs trying to play her. At first she buys it because they don't seem too suspicious. But then she slowly starts to realize that they aren't quite who they say they are, which leads them, teaming up with Roat, to start stepping up their game to figuring out where the doll is and how they are planning on getting, which we as an audience aren't even sure if Susy even knows about as this game of finding it begins. As all this starts to unfold, I personally go from comfortably sitting in my chair to cowering in it. Then we have this fun thing happening with the lighting of the film. As the movie gets darker in terms of tone, the movie also physically gets darker because it's getting later outside and Susy comes up with a clever plan to break all the light bulbs. Certain sequences in the final act then happen when the screen is literally black.

I don't really want to say anything about the ending of the film, but the fact that the audience watching and our three thugs end up just as blind as Susy does is rather genius. A similar thing happens in the movie "Don't Breathe" as the kids who break in end up in the dark, but we as an audience see everything. Not the case here. My computer screen went blank as I was left to listening to certain sequences and I loved that. And apparently an effect happened in the movie theaters themselves in 1967 where the lights slowly dimmed until being all completely turned out when the lights on the screen went out. Thus we are left to the power of sound design to tell parts of the story. Overall this was a movie-watching experience that I really enjoyed. As both movie's originate from the same playwright, we can call "Wait Until Dark" the cousin of Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder." If you've seen the latter, I think this is as equally intense and thrilling. If you've only seen this one and love it, go check out Hitchcock's film. I think "Wait Until Dark" is the type of thrilling Halloween-appropriate movie that 60's audiences probably loved while also being a thriller that absolutely holds up and can be enjoyed by today's audiences as well. Thus I'm giving "Wait Until Dark" a 9/10.