wish i saw it in theatres when it came out

I saw it in 1967 when it came out. Full house. The theater lights went out and the screaming began. If you've seen the movie, you know where the biggest scream is -- and the audience just kept screaming from that point until the finale ended and the ending came up. From what I've read, "Wait Until Dark" was the biggest "scream night at the movies" since Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960), which I did not see in a theater.

My grandpa is very critical of movies, and rarely even sees one he likes more than once. However, when my mom bought this on DVD, he immediately came over to watch it. He saw it in theaters and remembers during "the scene" and, if you've seen it, you know the exact part I'm talking about, he threw his popcorn up into the air. He doesn't get scared too easily, so the image of this in my mind is just hilarious. Great movie, perfect example of what horror should be.

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It's funny, but I can't remember exactly when or where I first saw Wait Until Dark. It was either in a rerelease in an art house theatre or late night on TV when I was in high school. Even though I'd already seen the movie at least once and possibly twice, when I attended the play at the local community theatre "the scene" still made me jump and yelp. It's just that good.

I too would have loved to have seen it at original release with the lights going out in the theatre. The movie stands on its own without that theatricality, but it would have added extra tension and suspense that would have been quite delicious.

Another rather funny thing is that for some reason I always remember Wait Until Dark as a black and white movie. Yet it was filmed in color. Somehow I think the way it was staged had the feel of a good black and white thriller.

Wait Until Dark is in my mind one of the best thrillers ever made. Unfortunately, few people in Hollywood seem to understand what is truly scary or suspenseful. No amount of blatant gore, shocks, or special effects will ever make up for what the human mind can imagine when given a nudge in the right direction. Understatement will win the day every time in my book.

The best modern example of this style of movie-making that I can think of is Signs. That movie scared me silly with just a silhouette on a rooftop and a flash of leg entering a corn field. Wait Until Dark would never have been as effective as it was if it had tried to go for big scare scenes every few minutes or bludgeoned us over the head with blatant details like so many crap movies do. Instead they went for a slow, steady building of tension that had a huge payoff at the end.

A little while ago they showed the film on campus at our cinema and I had zero expectations going into it. I had never heard of the film and had no idea what it was about, but I too was quickly drawn in by the intrigue. I did have the thrill of seeing this great movie in a dark theater, but unfortunately, much of the suspense was sucked out by an audience too concerned with laughing at the corny 1960s parts to sit back and let the film build up toward a satisfying climax. I was really annoyed toward the end, but I laughed when the gradually uninterested audience suddenly screamed for dear life in "The Scene." This is a great film for people who think contemporary gore fests are the only movies with scare quality. Brilliant in every respect.