Wait Until Dark

Susy was recently blinded and recently married. Susy's husband, Sam, is asked to hold a doll for a woman he doesn't know as they get off an airplane. The woman disappears. Later, she's found dead by her former associates, Mike and Carlino, small-time hoods, in Susy's basement apartment. (Both occupants of the apartment are then absent.) The doll woman's newer partner in crime, Harry Rote, who murdered her for self-dealing, presses Mike and Carlino into a scheme to recover the doll, which contains a fortune in smuggled heroin. After disposing of the body, the thugs return while Susy is present to continue their search. They assume Susy's blindness will enable them to search her apartment under her very nose for the doll. In Sam's absence, Mike pretends to be an old friend of Sam's, while the three together spin for Susy a story of a murder investigation of her husband from which only the finding of the missing doll can save him. Rote is a predator, and his stalking of Susy becomes ever more obvious as the blind woman's predicament becomes ever more desperate.
—Morganalee



While trying to smuggle a cache of heroin hidden in a doll into the US through JFK from a flight originating in Montreal, Lisa spots an adversary at JFK, so she hands off the doll to an unsuspecting man she just met, a New York photographer named Sam Hendrix, from who she plans on retrieving the doll later. However, Sam misplaces the doll once he gets home. That adversary, a sadistic criminal named Harry Roat, using an argument they can't refuse, convinces two of Lisa's just released from prison associates, Mike Talman and Carlino, to assist him in retrieving the doll from Sam's Greenwich Village apartment, them without even knowing what's inside, or without any of the three knowing that Hendrix has no idea where the doll is anymore. Roat, Talman and Carlino believe their task is all the more easy when they learn that Sam's wife, Susy Hendrix, is blind. As Susy is still adjusting to her recent blindness, Sam does whatever he can to make her as self-sufficient as possible, which she often still resents. They concoct a seemingly innocuous plan to infiltrate Susy's life while Sam is conveniently sent out of town on business. If the plan goes awry at any point, Susy would have no idea that her life would be in danger. What Roat, Talman and Carlino may be unaware of is that Susy does have eyes in the form of the Hendrix's precocious adolescent neighbor, Gloria, who knows more about the missing doll than she initially lets on, and that Susy may have certain advantages in life due to her blindness.
—Huggo



After an airplane trip, a young woman asks Susie's husband, Sam, to keep a doll for her to avoid spoiling the surprise of her daughter's gift. But the real reason is to avoid her partner, Harry Roat, whom she hopes to cheat of the drugs hidden in the doll. Harry discovers her treachery, murders her and leaves the body in Susie's apartment, where he has tracked Sam and the doll. He concocts an elaborate plan, involving Mike and Carlino, small-time hoods, to get Susie, who recently lost her sight in a fire, to reveal the doll's hiding place. They lure Sam away and take advantage of Susie's blindness, posing as an old friend, a police detective, and a father-son pair of eccentrics. Susie eventually catches on and, with the help of her young neighbor, Gloria, shows everyone that she is indeed a "world-champion blind lady."
—Joe Jurca



When Sam Hendrix carries a doll across the Canada-US border, he sets of a chain of events that will lead to a terrifying ordeal for his blind wife, Susy. The doll was stuffed with heroin and when it cannot be located, its owner, a Mr. Roat, stages a piece of theatre in an attempt to recover it. He arranges for Sam to be away from the house for a day and then has two con men, Mike Talman and a Mr. Carlito, alternately encourage or scare Susy into telling them where the doll is hidden. Talman pretends to be an old friend of Sam's while Carlito pretends to be a police officer. Despite their best efforts they make little headway as Susy has no idea where the doll might be, leading Mr. Roat to take a somewhat more violent approach to getting the information from her.
—garykmcd



In Montreal, Lisa brings a hand made doll stuffed with heroine to New York. However, in JFK Airport, she sees a stranger waiting for her and she asks the photographer passenger Sam Hendrix to keep the doll for her and she meets the stranger. A couple of days later, the small time crooks Mike Talman and his partner Sergeant Carlino are invited for a mysterious meeting in the apartment of Susy Hendrix. While in the apartment, they find the body of Lisa hidden in a wardrobe. Roat arrives and blackmails them with the fact that their fingerprints are everywhere in the apartment. They have to help him remove Lisa's body but Roat offers them a large amount of money to find the doll. When Susy returns, Mike pretends that he is an old friend, and Carlino and Roat pushes Susy in a sick game, trying to find where the doll might be.
—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil



A recently blinded woman is terrorized by a trio of thugs while they search for a heroin-stuffed doll they believe is in her apartment.
—Matt Patay





SYNOPSIS

The film opens in a Montreal apartment on a cold winter morning, where Lisa (Samantha Jones) waits for an old man to sew bags of heroin into the cloth body of a rag doll. As Lisa leaves the apartment with the doll, we see the man watching her leave, then dialing someone on the phone. Lisa takes the doll with her on a flight to New York City, but when, on disembarking, she sees a man watching her, she becomes worried and gives the doll for safekeeping to fellow passenger photographer Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). The man who'd been watching Lisa then roughly escorts her away. Later, when Lisa calls Sam to ask for the doll, Sam and his wife are unable to find it.

Some time afterward, small-time con artist Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and his partner Carlino (Jack Weston) arrive at the basement apartment where Sam lives with his blind wife, Susy (Audrey Hepburn). The two men watch until both the apartment's occupants have left, then enter. They have an appointment with Lisa, who'd been their partner in crime prior to the recent imprisonment of both, but they are met instead by Harry Roat, Jr. (Alan Arkin), whom the audience recognizes as the man who watched and met Lisa at the airport. He offers them $2,000 each if they find Lisa's doll, which is somewhere in the apartment.

After discovering Lisa's dead body hanging in a garment bag, Talman and Carlino want to make a quick exit, but Roat points out that they have left their fingerprints all over the apartment, while he has worn gloves. Roat is then able to prevail upon the two to help him dispose of Lisa's body (he claims that he killed her because he caught her going into business for herself). Roat orders Talman and Carlino to help him try to find the heroin-stuffed doll.

The next day, Susy's neighbor leaves for the weekend, and Sam leaves on a business trip. Once Susy is alone, the criminals begin an elaborate con game: In order to gain entry into the apartment, Talman arrives posing as a friend of Sam's, Carlino poses as a police officer, and Roat poses first as an old man and then as the man's son. Using first an innocuous story about Sam and the doll, then a darker one implying that Lisa has been murdered and that Sam will be suspected, the men persuade Susy to help them find the doll. Talman gives her the number of the phone booth across the street as his own after falsely warning her of a police car stationed outside.

Susy meanwhile has grown suspicious of Carlino and Roat, and Gloria (Julie Herrod), a neighbor who is paid by Susy to help her with errands, has been going in and out of the apartment, sometimes without Susy's noticing. After Talman leaves, Gloria sneaks into the apartment carrying the doll, which she stole earlier. She tells Susy there is no police car outside, and Susy discovers the doll. Wanting to confirm her suspicions about Carlino and Roat, Susy tells Gloria to go home and watch the phone booth that is next to Roat's van parked outside. If a man goes into it, Gloria is to phone Susy, let the phone ring twice, and hang up. Gloria tells Susy she can signal her by banging on the pipes.

On Carlino's next visit, after he calls Roat at the phone booth, Gloria sends Susy the telephone signal, and she sends the signal a second time after Susy calls Talman to tell him she has the doll. Finally realizing that Talman is a criminal in cahoots with the two others, Susy hides the doll. When he walks in with Corlino and Roat following quietly, she tells him the doll is at Sam's studio. The three criminals leave after Roat cuts the telephone cord.

When Susy bangs on the pipes, Gloria comes in and Susy sends her to the bus station in a taxi to wait for Sam. When Susy discovers that the telephone cord has been cut, she prepares to defend herself by putting the criminals in the dark along with her, breaking all the light bulbs in the apartment's light fixtures. She also pours a chemical into a bowl.

When Talman returns, she refuses to cooperate when he demands that she hand over the doll. Talman has spent the most time with Susy and he has come to admire her for her quiet strength and ability to stand up to the three criminals despite her disability. He admits to her that he and his confederates are part of a criminal plot and that Sam, as Susy suspected, is completely innocent of any involvement, while Roat is a particular danger. Susy needn't worry, though, Talman says, as he has sent Carlino to kill Roat.

However, having anticipated that the others would turn on him, Roat has instead killed Carlino by running him over. As Talman prepares to leave, pausing to say something to Susy as he stands in the doorway, Roat suddenly appears and stabs him in the back.

Intent on acquiring the doll, Roat chains the door shut in the dark apartment, pours gasoline on the floor, and sets a piece of newspaper on fire. A desperate battle follows in which Susy throws the chemical solution in Roat's face and forces him to put out the fire as well as smashes the last lightbulb in the apartment. The battle ends when Roat obtains light by opening the refrigerator, whose door he props open with a rag in the hinge. Susy, weeping (because she forgot about the refrigerator light), pulls the doll out of its hiding place and hands it to Roat. While Roat cuts open the doll and gloats over the treasure inside, Susy is able, unnoticed by him, to arm herself with a butcher knife.

Roat then announces his intention to rape Susy, but, as he leads her to the bedroom, she manages to stab him in the belly. As she stumbles across the floor toward the kitchen window to scream for help, Roat leaps out from the darkened bedroom and grabs her ankle. Screaming, Susy wrenches free, but the dying Roat doggedly pursues her, using the knife with which she stabbed him to drag himself across the floor. Susy is at the refrigerator, trying to close its door and thus extinguish its light, unaware of the rag that is preventing its closure. She then gropes for the refrigerator's cord, murmuring desperately, "Where is it?" As the reeling Roat stands with his last strength and staggers toward her with the knife, the refrigerator light finally goes out, and Susy's scream merges with the sound of a police siren.

The scene switches to the arrival of police cars outside the apartment. When the police enter with Sam and Gloria, Sam finds an unbroken light bulb, and we see the room littered with the bodies of Talman and Roat, but no Susy. Finally, as Sam calls out for her, the door of the unplugged refrigerator moves, and Susy emerges from behind it, shaken but alive.