Fear Knows no Sense

Recently, I was digging through some DVD’s at this awesome store that sells used and new DVD’s, CD’s, and video games, when I came across two old thriller movies that I absolutely adore, Wait Until Dark, and The Spiral Staircase. After stumbling upon these less-then-widely-known gems, I thought, why not talk about go over each of them a bit for my next blog entry.

Both movies are not only notable for their masterful uses of suspense, but because both films have handicapped protagonists that have an inner power and determination that transcends their perceived helplessness. Both struggle with and ultimately use their disabilities to their advantage at least for a portion of the movie. in Wait Until Dark, the protagonist uses her heightened senses due to blindness to help figure out the truth behind a dangerous conman. In The Spiral Staircase, a period piece set in the early 1900’s a Psycho-somatically mute woman, (meaning the cause for her muteness is mental,) uses the acknowledgment that she can’t call for help to get close enough to trouble to stop it.

The first movie, the 1967 classic, Wait until Dark is new to me. It stars Audrey Hepburn as Susy, a recently blinded woman who is still learning to live without sight. Her husband, a photographer, comes into possession of a doll (unknowingly,) stuffed with heroin during a trip, and it it’s not long before the psychotic Mr. Roat (who was expecting to be delivered the doll in the first place,) tracks it down and hires two con men to help him with an elaborate plan to get it back. What they don’t know is that Susy misplaced the doll and it was stolen by the little girl that lives upstairs complicating things further.

After luring her husband away for an overnight photo shoot, the three crooks begin an elaborate hoax to try and make Susy hand over the doll. The three men come and go into her apartment, trying to trick the poor blind woman into thinking her husband had an affair, then murdered his mistress, and that the doll is evidence. The two con men each play consistent roles in the plot, one pretends to be an old war buddy of the husband to get on Susy’s good side and the other pretends to be a cop to intimidate her. Mr. Roat pretends to be two different people, (at different times,) and this is when things get interesting.

Susy can tell by the sounds of the shoes and the way Roat walks that both his “characters” are the same person. She starts using her other senses more clearly to uncover the plot, which leads to an incredibly tense, climactic showdown: Susy, realizing that Roat killed off the other two men and was tired of playing games with her, smashes all of the lights outside of and inside of her apartment so she has the advantage of using her other senses to the fullest while Roat struggles. For this part of the movie, there is very low lighting and the more traumatic, violent scenes are left to the imagination of the audience.  In fact when this movie was shown in theaters, the lights were dimmed bit by bit until the theater went completely dark to drive home the experience.

Now, I had heard a lot about this movie from some friends who are film buffs, but I had my doubts about how scary this would be, and honestly it’s not too creepy for the first half of the movie. The suspense slowly builds and really takes off for the last 45 minutes. The TV channel Bravo listed this movie’s climax in its top 10 (out of 100) scary movie moments, and I can wholeheartedly say that I agree with them. The ending makes this movie folks. It had me tense, on the edge of my seat and I swear I jumped 3 feet at least 3-4 times through the big showdown. As a whole, this movie is excellent. If you find yourself not too thrilled with the first 20-30 minutes, I urge you to keep watching it all the way through, you won’t be disappointed.

Next Time: A look at The Spiral Staircase

Peace out and geek out,
Mikeke352