Arasbaran Cultural Center screens Wait Until Dark

Arasbaran Cultural Center screens “Wait Until Dark”

TEHRAN- “Wait Until Dark,” a 1967 American psychological thriller by Terence Young, went on screen at the Arasbaran Cultural Center in Tehran on Wednesday.

Film critic Amir Qaderi attended a screening of the film followed by a review session.

“Wait Until Dark” follows Susy Hendrix, a blind woman living with her husband, Sam, in a Greenwich Village apartment. Their quiet life is disrupted when Sam unknowingly becomes connected to a dangerous heroin-smuggling scheme.

The trouble begins when Lisa, an attractive drug courier, arrives in New York carrying heroin hidden inside a stuffed doll. At the airport, she notices a threatening man watching her and tricks another passenger, photographer Sam Hendrix, into taking the doll for safekeeping. Lisa is later murdered by the mysterious Harry Roat Jr., who then recruits two small-time criminals, Mike Talman and Carlino, to help him recover the doll. When the men discover Lisa's body hidden in the Hendrixes' apartment, Roat forces them to cooperate by threatening to implicate them in her murder.

Susy soon becomes the target of an elaborate deception. Because she is blind, the criminals assume she will be easy to manipulate. Mike pretends to be an old friend of Sam's, while Carlino poses as a police detective. Roat uses several disguises and invented stories to convince Susy that Sam may be connected to the murder of a woman named Lejiana. The criminals lead her to believe that the stuffed doll could prove Sam's innocence, encouraging her to search the apartment for it.

Susy's young neighbor, Gloria, accidentally returns the doll after having borrowed it. Gloria also helps Susy investigate the suspicious activity around the apartment. By piecing together the evidence, Susy realizes that the men have been lying to her and that she is being deliberately manipulated. She hides the doll and attempts to contact the police, only to discover that her telephone line has been cut.

Realizing that her blindness can also work to her advantage, Susy destroys almost every source of light in the apartment, leaving only the safelight from Sam's darkroom. Mike returns and demands the doll, but Roat appears and kills him after anticipating the criminals' betrayal. Roat then locks Susy inside the apartment, spreads gasoline around the rooms, and threatens to burn the building.

Susy fights back by using her knowledge of the apartment and her heightened senses. She blinds Roat temporarily with photographic chemicals and plunges the room into complete darkness. Although Roat eventually forces her to surrender the doll, Susy secretly attacks him with a kitchen knife. Their final struggle ends when she manages to hide in the darkness and escape his grasp.

Just as Roat is about to find her, Sam arrives with the police. They break down the apartment door and discover Susy alive and Roat dead. What began as a carefully planned criminal deception ultimately becomes a terrifying battle in which Susy's blindness becomes the key to her survival.

SAB/

source: tehrantimes.com