Wait until Dark

1967 Helen Keller biopic

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: The Three Stooges look for a doll stuffed with packets of heroin in a blind woman's apartment.
They concoct a really complex plan

Other than a couple nifty suspense scenes, including a suffocating and intense climax which has the second best use of a refrigerator I've seen in a movie during the last couple weeks, there's not much to see here. The story's ludicrous, that aforementioned plan involving numerous telephone calls, costumes (seriously, why are costumes necessary to fool a blind woman?), signals, and a van making no sense for a criminal who apparently doesn't have problems resorting to brute violence. And why do they need to mess with the blinds in the apartment to signal to their cohorts in the van? Wouldn't a flick of the lights (you know, since the woman is blind) work well enough? Plot holes galore, plot holes big enough that Audrey Hepburn's blind character could probably see them. Speaking of Audrey, I really didn't think she was right for this role. The cutesiness didn't seem to fit her right here, and she was really awkward when interacting with the terrible child actor. Alan Arkin's character is more interesting, but there's just something unnatural about the performance, like he's working too hard at being cold and calculating. There's entertainment value here, but most of what happens here is stuff that can only happen in a movie, like it had it's very own Wait until Dark logic. It really hurt my chances to completely enjoy the movie although the suspenseful moments were really well done.

Recommended by Cory.