Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Wait Until Dark Blu-ray Movie Review

Hysterical Blindness

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 24, 2017

Audrey Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for her lead performance in Wait Until Dark (or "WUD"), and Hepburn is the reason why the film remains watchable today. Adapted from a successful play of the same name by Frederick Knott (Dial M for Murder) and efficiently directed by Terence Young (Thunderball), WUD became a cause célèbre when it was released in 1967, assisted by a William Castle-style ad campaign warning that no one would be seated during the last eight minutes and urging smokers in the audience not to light up during that portion of the film (how times have changed!). Viewers of the era may have been accustomed to slow-burn Hitchcockian suspense, but "jump" scares of the kind that filmmakers like John Carpenter would later make commonplace were still a novelty, especially in studio films with A-list stars. And psychopaths who tormented victims for the fun of it had not yet become a cinematic staple, allowing a young Alan Arkin to create an eccentric villain whose tics were just as unnerving as his violence. Theater audiences routinely screamed in unison at the film's climax, and afterward people traded stories of how they had been scared out of their seats.

I doubt anyone will have a similar reaction to WUD today, but Hepburn's emotional intensity as the film's tormented heroine remains just as moving as it was in 1967. The curious can now judge for themselves—and existing fans can revisit a beloved classic—in this new Blu-ray edition from the Warner Archive Collection.

The MacGuffin of WUD is a doll stuffed with heroin that accompanies a smuggler named Lisa (Samantha Jones) on a flight from Montreal to New York. Upon arrival, Lisa panics at an unexpected reception and presses the doll into the hands of a fellow traveler, a photographer named Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Hendrix brings the toy home to his Lower Manhattan apartment, where it becomes the object of a feverish search by a trio of bad guys. Two of them are long-time partners—a smooth con artist named Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and a former cop, Carlino (Jack Weston)—but the operation's mastermind is a knife-wielding weirdo named Roat (Arkin), who routinely hides behind sunglasses, has a hair-trigger temper, and likes to masquerade as other people, using elaborate disguises.

The object of the trio's evil machinations is Sam Hendrix's new wife, Susy (Hepburn), who lost her sight in a traffic accident a year earlier and is still learning to cope with blindness. Susy attends "blind school" to learn Braille and other now-essential skills, and she gets occasional help from Gloria (Julie Herrod), the latchkey kid who lives one floor up. Susy's disability and her trusting nature make her an easy target. After Sam is sent to New Jersey with a phony booking, she is alone when Mike Talman appears at her door pretending to be her husband's old Marine buddy. From there, the scheme grows increasingly convoluted, with Carlino posing as a police sergeant responding to a break-in and Roat assuming multiple roles. After a search of the apartment fails to turn up the drug-laden doll, the trio assumes that it is locked in the apartment's safe, and they invent an urgent scenario in which Susy has to give them the doll to protect Sam from (imaginary) criminal charges.

Hepburn traces Susy's emotional arc with affecting authenticity, as the gentle soul is terrorized, first, by concern for her husband, and then by the dawning realization that she's being gaslighted by Mike and his cohorts. When the gang realizes that Susy has caught on to their ruse, they resort to threats of violence, mistakenly assuming that a frightened blind woman will be helpless against them. But Susy turns out to be impressively resourceful, fighting off the intruders with a walking cane, with Sam's photographic chemicals, with gasoline and matches and, above all, with darkness, which evens the odds. Much of the third act is played out by nothing more than the light of a refrigerator bulb. All the while, Hepburn's performance makes Susy's anguish palpable on the screen.

WUD's origins as a stage play are evident in the degree to which the action is confined to the Hendrix apartment, only occasionally venturing into the stairwell and street outside and to a few locations like the airport and a nearby parking lot. Young's unobtrusive direction uses careful camera placement and moves to open up the limited space, and his closeups fully exploit the emotional transparency of his lead actress' luminous face. Hepburn took the part as a departure from the innocents and ingenues for which she was best known, and she brings the gentle openness of those roles to her portrayal of Susy, which is so affecting that it renders the plot's many contrivances irrelevant. Arkin's Roat may come as a revelation to viewers who know him only from his work as elderly curmudgeons in such films as Argo and Little Miss Sunshine. In a different era, he would have made a terrifying Joker.

Wait Until Dark Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wait Until Dark was shot by cinematographer Charles Lang, with whom Hepburn had previously worked on Sabrina and Charade. For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, a new scan was done at 2K from a recent interpositive by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility, followed by MPI's usual careful color-correction and cleanup. (The version previously available for broadcast and streaming is a fifteen-year-old 1080i master.) The result is an accurate and film-like image that I suspect will be unsatisfactory to those accustomed to the clarity of digital photography. Much of WUD takes place in darkness and shadow, where detail is deliberately obscured, and even scenes set in full daylight have a soft texture (which is more pronounced in screenshots than when the image is in motion). The image is sufficiently detailed to convey the Hendrix apartment's functional decor and the characters' everyday wardrobe. The film's grain pattern is natural and undisturbed by digital manipulation, although the grain is somewhat heavier in WUD than in many other films of the era. Black levels are accurate (which is especially important for WUD's many dark scenes), and the palette is largely dull and muted, with occasional flashes of intensely saturated color, usually red (e.g., Gloria's red sweater or the skiing outfit worn by one of Susy's neighbors).

WAC has mastered WUD at its usual generous bitrate, which here averages 35.00 Mbps.

Wait Until Dark Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

WUD's original mono track has been restored from a composite magnetic track and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The fidelity and dynamic range are good enough to give breathing room to Henry Mancini's ominous score, and the sound effects are clearly rendered, including a lot of breaking glass in the finale. The dialogue is always clear, even when Alan Arkin is speaking with Roat's bizarre intonations.

Wait Until Dark Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD release of WUD, with the omission of an essay entitled "Stage Frantics" that traced the film's adaptation from stage to screen.

• Take a Look in the Dark (480i; 1.33:1; 8:40): This 2003 featurette includes interviews with Alan Arkin and producer Mel Ferrer (the latter has since passed away). They discuss casting, Arkin's portrayal of Roat and, of course, working with Hepburn. Arkin also relates the concerns of studio head Jack Warner, which were dispelled by the film's first preview.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:36): "Audrey Hepburn—the role you're going to remember whenever you're alone."



• Warning Trailer (480i; 1.78:1; 1:08): This is the trailer touting the film's "breath-taking climax, which takes place in almost total darkness on the screen" and warning viewers against lighting up or coming in late.

Wait Until Dark Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

WUD was a triumph for Hepburn, but it also marked her withdrawal from the film industry into private life. She would not make another film until 1976, when she co-starred with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, and she took only four additional roles before her death in 1993. (The last was the ethereal Hap in Steven Spielberg's Always.) Although Susy Hendrix may have been a departure from the star's previous characters, she is instantly recognizable as a Hepburn creation, and the film endures because of her. Highly recommended.