Item: WAIT UNTIL DARK
Rating: 94
Author: TroyAnderson

WAIT UNTIL DARK REVIEWED

“Wait Until Dark” is my favorite Audrey Hepburn movie. It’s also my favorite Alan Arkin movie. Richard Crenna? Well, it’s my second favorite performance for him. I’ll ride or die for Trautman. As someone who never cared for the play, I find something special in the film staging. Playing upon physical disabilities to heighten drama wasn’t terribly new when this film hit screens in 1967. What’s funnier is that this was Terence Young’s first non Bond film in a few years.

Young was able to find the excitement in a bunch of heroin dealers antagonizing a blind woman. But, the terror here felt far more malicious than slightly sexual terror in the similar themed film “Lady in a Cage”. Jack Weston and Richard Crenna plays their henchman dealers in a way that wouldn’t have felt out of place in that earlier film. However, Alan Arkin brings something new to Roat. Arkin’s Roat is a son of a bitch that works with the edge of the greatest capitalist cut-throat.

Roat knows what he wants and he knows that Susy is expendable & innocent. Whether it’s one of his many disguises or the legendary final sequence in the dark, this is Roat’s game to play. While Arkin could’ve chewed scenery, his careful calculations revels in bringing one of cinema’s biggest bastards to life. I have to cap all of this by saying that I forgot about this film’s finale. So damn fulfilling.