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Summary: A very original thriller.
Review: I think "Wait Until Dark" is excellent! It looks sort of theatrical, like a play, most of the story takes place in Audrey Hepburn's apartment. The story is about criminals looking for a doll full of heroin that they think is in Hepburn's apartment. They take advantage of he blind state and put on clever "skits", so to speak, in order to find the doll. However "The World's Best Blind Lady" proves that her loss of sight is a small hindrance and that she is a very clever opponent. The climax was heartstopping! If you like thrillers this is a must-see!
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Summary: One of the most heartstopping moment ever.
Review: Watch this with the lights out and your heart will stop when... One of the best classic suspense movies I have seen. Audrey, lovely as ever, blind finds herself at the mercy of bad guys. but who has the edge?
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Summary: Delightfully suspensful!
Review: This is the first time I have seen an Audrey Hepburn movie, and I loved it! The strength of her character is what made the movie, and the intricate plans of the villians made it almost funny, yet scary at the same time! I couldn't believe the ending!
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Summary: GREAT!
Review: This movie kept me on the edge of my seat. Audrey Hepburn did a super job! If you're considering buying this, DO NOT hesitate! Go for it!
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Summary: Thrilling!
Review: I absolutely loved "Wait Until Dark"! It is a thrilling, suspenseful movie- I sat on the edge of my seat for most of it. Audrey Hepburn does a brilliant job portraying a blind woman- it is very believable! I would highly recommend if you like suspense.
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Summary: "The blinds moving up and down. . . the squeaking shoes. . .
Review: ...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!
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Summary: Truly Terrifying!
Review: 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.
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Summary: Best Audrey Hepburn Film
Review: Its really good to watch a Hepburn film where she's not playing a demure princess.And she displayed her good acting talent in this one.
Audrey Hepburn palys a newly blind woman who was left in a house by her husband and who was being terrorized by a group of nasty men trying to retrieve a doll inside her house filled with drugs.Its up to her to save herself with a little help from a little girl next door.Richard Crenna's character pretends to be an authority trying to help her to get inside the house easier but they somehow couldnt find the doll.The men inside her house seem to be acting strange (she hears somebody wiping the furniture all over the living room) then she realized theyre up to something.
The highlight of the film is when she's trying to save herself (breaking all the light bulbs so they would be equal) from the killer Alan Arkin.
I saw this one rainy day and it added to the suspense.This is one of the greatest suspense movies ive seen.
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Summary: This movie is AWESOME!
Review: You can't miss with this movie! I showed it my daughter's Halloween party last year. Seven 12-year olds were delighted with the suspense and terror! No gore, no overly intense scenes, just enough creepiness and suspense to thrill the h--- out of them. This is one of my all time favorite movies, and Audrey is excellent as the sweet, vulnerable blind woman. I'm so excited that this is finally on DVD!
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Summary: Audrey Hepburn as the world's champion blind lady
Review: 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.
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