Wait Until Dark

Wait Until Dark is a mystery/thriller play by Frederick Knott. The heroine is recently blind Susy Hendrix, a Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three thugs searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who since has been murdered. The trio tries to convince Susy her spouse has been implicated in the crime and the only way to protect him is to surrender the doll. More murder and mayhem ensue when she refuses. It was originally produced on Broadway in 1966, and made into a film the next year starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin.


 * Affably Evil: Talman and Carlino.
 * Ax Crazy: Roat.
 * The Con
 * Con Man: Roat, Talman, and Carlino
 * Disability Superpower
 * Faux Affably Evil: Roat.
 * Foreshadowing: There are many: the icebox, which plays an unusually important role for an icebox, and is mentioned in several different contexts, early in the movie, and Susy's lines "I don't want Gloria today, I don't need her"; "What if I get [killed] as a poor, defenseless blind lady whose husband is off in Asbury Park?" "Do I have to be the world's champion blind lady? [her husband says "Yes!"] then I will"; and "I wish I could do...important things," followed by a list of things she wishes she could do, that are not very important compared to.
 * Genre Blind: Ironically, not Susy.
 * The Ghost: Lisa.
 * Heel Face Turn: Richard Crenna's character seems to be doing this
 * The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
 * I Lied: "Did I?? I must have had my fingers crossed."
 * Let's Get Dangerous: Susy
 * The Mark: Susy.
 * Plot Tailored to the Party: the climax of the film involves
 * Protect This House
 * Punch Clock Villain: Talman and Carlino.
 * Scare Chord: Oh boy!
 * The film's music score, incidentally, was written by Henry Mancini.
 * A Simple Plan: The con men try to scam Susy into revealing where the doll went, by posing as cops and trying to hint that Suzy's husband was having an affair with a murdered woman. For a blind woman, Susy quickly senses things are amiss - she can tell one "cop" is wiping away evidence - and it drives the sociopathic Roat into an even simpler plan...
 * Sinister Shades: Donned by Roat for much of the film.
 * The Spook: Roat (which is not his real name).
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: when Roat figures the other two con men are no longer needed, and convinced (rightly) that his "partners" are turning on him...
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: when Roat figures the other two con men are no longer needed, and convinced (rightly) that his "partners" are turning on him...