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Susy Hendrix: Gloria, I know you're there!
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Roat: Aren't you forgetting something?
Mike Talman: What?
Roat: Fingerprints.
Roat: You just signed your names all over this place.
Roat: [Carlino begins wiping off finger prints off banister] Hmmm. Even if you could remember eveything you touched it would still take hours to wipe em off wouldn't it? If not Days.
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Carlino: We don't work safes.
Roat: I know. But you talk. And that's why you've been invited to this party. To talk you way into that big black safe, Sergeant.
Mike Talman: There's a locked closet in the bedroom.
Roat: Oh, no, not there. It's just clothes.
Mike Talman: How do you know?
Roat: I looked.
Mike Talman: You have the key?
Roat: It's on the ledge above the door.
Mike Talman: No it isn't.
Roat: Well, they must have taken it with them.
Mike Talman: They lock the closet, but don't bolt the front door?
Roat: They're strange people; they lose dolls.
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Roat: I cannot negotiate in an atmosphere of mistrust.
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Roat: Did you know they wanted to kill me? I did. I knew even before they did. They were awful amateurs, and that's why you saw through them.
Susy Hendrix: I saw through you too.
Roat: No, not all the way, Suzy. Even now, not all the way. The lovely thing was the way I let them set it all up. All that silliness of meeting in the parking lot, the whole thing, they had comic book minds. So, I let them do it their way, right up to the very end. And then, topsy-turvy. Me topsy and them turvy.
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Susy Hendrix: [trying to find the refrigerator plug] Where is it? Where is it? OH GOD!
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Mike Talman: Damn it, you act as if you're in kindergarten! This is the big bad world, full of mean people, where nasty things happen!
Susy Hendrix: Now you tell me.
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Mike Talman: And you? What's your favorite toy?
Roat: [pulls out a mini statue] Geraldine.
Carlino: What does she do?
[a large blade comes out horizontally from the feet of the statue]
Mike Talman: And may we have Geraldine on the table too?
Roat: No, we may not.
Carlino: Why the hell not?
Roat: Because she's the referee.
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Susy Hendrix: Mr. Roat, are you looking at me?
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Susy Hendrix: Bye, dope.
Sam Hendrix: Bye, dope.
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Description
A photographer's blind wife, trapped in her New York apartment by an evil trio who are ready to murder to retrieve a heroin-filled doll hidden in her apartment, cleverly outwits them. Music by Henry Mancini. Based on the long running Broadway play by Frederick Knott.
Amazon.com essential video
Audrey Hepburn's last Oscar nomination was for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's famed stage thriller about a blind woman, a con man (Alan Arkin), and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn's husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she's unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The murderous Arkin, aided by sympathetic henchman Richard Crenna, will let nothing stand in the way of his obtaining it, even if it comes down to assaying multiple "personalities" in order to visit and terrorize Hepburn; Crenna is unwillingly enlisted to help. However, the "world's champion blind lady" (as Hepburn sardonically states) is more than up to the task of defending herself in her basement Manhattan apartment in a heart-stopping climax that to this day still defines the way horror movies with jack-in-the-box psychos are made. Despite the obvious staginess of it all (the entire action takes place in Hepburn's apartment), it still works magnificently, thanks to Hepburn's steely will and Arkin's deadly, sadistic madman. A helpful hint: turn out all the lights when you watch it; theaters back in 1967 did so, killing the guiding lights during the film's last 15 minutes. We can't tell you why, but trust us, it's worth it. --Mark Englehart
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