An attractive drug mule, Lisa, flies from Montreal to New York City, smuggling heroin inside a stuffed doll. Disembarking, she sees a threatening man staring at her; using a ruse, she gives the doll to a fellow passenger, professional photographer Sam Hendrix, for temporary safekeeping. She is roughly escorted off by the scowling man. Soon afterwards, Lisa calls Sam, who claims he can’t find the doll, and tells his wife Susy to look out for it. Susy was blinded in a fiery car crash a year prior, and is still learning to live without sight.
The next day, Sam is sent on a goose chase to New Jersey. Unaware, con artists Mike and Carlino arrive at a Greenwich Villagebasement apartment they believe to be Lisa’s, but instead is the Hendrix’s.
Finding nothing, the criminals are confronted by knife-wielding Harry Roat, the man from the airport, who pays them to help find his doll. The cons, who had been in cahoots with Lisa in hijacking the heroin, discover her dead in a closet. Roat blackmails them into covering up the murder and helping dispose of the body. The three collaborate on a plan to persuade Susy to help them search the apartment.
The next day Susy learns that the police have found a woman’s body nearby. Roat phones her posing as an agent for a model, Lejiana, Sam was to photograph. Mike arrives and tells Susy that he is an old friend of Sam's from the Marines. He leaves, and Roat, disguised as an old man, breaks in, perturbs Susy, and leaves with something. Susy beckons Mike back to call the police, and Carlino arrives impersonating one. He pointedly asks about Sam’s whereabouts the night before. Roat returns, posing as the old man's son, explaining that his father broke in to find proof Sam was involved with his daughter-in-law. Lejiana has not been seen since last night and potentially left her doll at the apartment. Susy concludes the dead body is the fictional Lejiana, and suspects Sam of both an affair and the murder. She becomes desperate to find the doll to eliminate any connection between her husband and the killing.
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Unaware of the unfolding life and death drama, Gloria, Susy’s young helper, sneaks in to return the doll she had harmlessly “borrowed”. Susy asks if Mike's claims there is a police car outside are true. Hearing no, Suzy enlists Gloria to stake out a phone booth across the street, which reveals that Mike's call are coming from there. Terrified, Susy realizes the men are all criminals, and hides the doll. She diverts them to Sam's studio; Carlino stays behind on guard.
Susy sends Gloria off to intercept Sam. She then breaks every lightbulb inside and out but for the darkroom safelight. Mike returns, realizes she’s figured things out, but still demands the doll. Suzy refuses. He tells her that he has sent Carlino to kill Roat – but a wary Roat had ambushed him and Carlino is dead. So soon is Mike, stabbed by Roat.
Roat secures the only door with a lock and chain, then douses the apartment in gasoline. He terrorizes Susy with a lit newspaper. Susy throws hydrogen peroxide in his face, and unplugs the safelight, plunging the apartment into total darkness. Roat lights matches to see, but Susy checkmates him by dousing him with gas. She demands he tap her cane while sitting in place so she knows he is staying put. Confidently, she dials the police, just to learn the phone cord has been cut.
Roat opens the refrigerator to turn on its light. Susy hears the fridge motor, recognizes she’s been beaten, and turns over the doll. While Roat slices it open, Susy stabs him with a kitchen knife. She can’t budge the door and heads for a kitchen window. Roat suddenly lunges and snares her ankle. She wrenches free and hides behind the open fridge door. As Roat rises to stab her, she yanks its plug, restoring total darkness.
Sam arrives in a police car. Everyone rushes in. They call for Susy: there is no answer.
She is found, unharmed, cowering in place. Roat lies dead beneath a toppled shelf.
To immerse viewers in the suspense of the climactic scene, movie theater owners were encouraged to dim their lights, then turn them off, one by one to the legal limit.[9][10]
Reception
Box office
The film was one of the more popular of its year, earning North American rentals of $7.35 million (equivalent to $69 million in 2024).[11] In Spain, translated as Sola en la oscuridad (Alone in the dark), it was released in March 1968 and sold 1.9 million tickets.[12] It was re-released in August 1980 with 203,036 tickets sold.[13]
Critical response
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."[4]
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."[14]
Roger Ebert gave the movie three and a half stars upon release, writing "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."[15]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Nail-bitingly tense and brilliantly acted, Wait Until Dark is a compact thriller that makes the most of its fiendishly clever premise."[16]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[17] The film was ranked tenth on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for its riveting climax.[18]
Despite the film's acclaim and receiving an Oscar nomination, Hepburn stepped away from film acting after Wait Until Dark's release and would not appear on film again until Robin and Marian in 1976.[19]
The score for the film was composed by Henry Mancini, who had scored other Audrey Hepburn films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's and Two for the Road.[23] The Wait Until Dark score is notable for Mancini's use of two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart, with the out of tune instrument’s notes providing discordance that heightens the eerie effect.[24]
↑ Hannan, Brian (2016). Coming Back to a Theater Near You: A History of Hollywood Reissues, 1914–2014. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p.178. ISBN978-1-4766-2389-4.
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