A Warm Cold War Comedy: ‘The Russians Are Coming!’

A bittersweet moment with Alan Arkin, Eva Marie Saint, & Carl Reiner near the finale of 1966's "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! was released in 1966, at the height of the cold war. The Norman Jewison directed comedy, about chaos caused by a Russian sub that runs aground near a small New England town, was notable for its even-handed treatment of both Russian and American characters. At the time, it was a huge commercial hit and received four Oscar nominations.

I find it odd that there's some derision directed at The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! because it was so successful in its time. And yet classic movie fans fall all over the marathon farce It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Russians may seem quaint by modern movies’ in your face style, but the humor is still most apt and the cast is mostly terrific. Also, the humor of Russians is more character-driven than Mad World. I've always been allergic to the heavy-handed slapstick of Mad, and I think Jewison is a far more skilled and subtle director than Stanley Kramer, whose style was pedantic.

Cantankerous Carl Reiner warms up to adorable Eva Marie Saint in 1966's
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

And while The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! indeed feels like an elevated and elongated sitcom, satirizing American hysteria is still pertinent today. Also, I'm really surprised that Carl Reiner didn't have a hand in writing this, because his and Saint’s characters remind me a bit of Reiner’s creations, Rob and Laura Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Hilarious physical comedy in "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

I love Carl Reiner and his natural comic abilities save his performance as playwright Walt Whittaker, such as his tied up scene with the local telephone operator, played by Tessie O’Shea. But his comic sour puss persona wears thin fast as a lead, that's why he was so much better as the side character Alan Brady on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Watch Reiner as Rob Petrie in the pilot that was later re-tooled for Dick Van Dyke to much greater effect and you’ll see the difference.

Eva Marie Saint's level-headed wife tries to explain all the chaos in 1966's
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

Eva Marie Saint is a fine straight woman and quite appealing as Ellie Whittaker. Saint looks lovely here in her early 40’s, she’s both subtly sexy and the patient wife to bombastic Reiner’s husband. I always liked Saint’s simple style, which didn’t date her to later audiences. In this film, Eva Marie looks timeless.

Alan Arkin's Russian asks Carl Reiner's writer to please not try to kill him again!
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

Alan Arkin is charismatic and funny as the Russian Lt. Rozanov. Arkin's grand-parents were Russian Jews and he spoke Russian fluently. Here, he gets to fracture English to comic effect. This was the actor’s first major role and he got raves and an Oscar nomination. Arkin is hilarious but has authority, believability, and warmth. With those dark expressive eyes and sly smile, Alan could have played more romantic leads in a later era.

John Phillip Law is the shy Russian officer in 1966's "The Russians Are Coming!
The Russians Are Coming!"

John Phillip Law, often considered wooden, is sweet here and those blue-grey eyes are riveting. As Alexei, the 6 ft. 5 Law is a gentle giant. Remembering him from this and a few international movies, I assumed Law was European, probably German, like Horst Bucholz. I was surprised to find that he was born in California and grew up around the movie business! He’s quite endearing here and I had also forgotten that he passed away in 2008, at just age 70, of pancreatic cancer.

Brian Keith as the exasperated sheriff, with Dick Schaal & Jonathan Winters
in 1966's "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"
Keith's bangs are really his mussed up comb-over!

What a great cast of character actors in The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Some you will just recognize by their familiar faces, others are well-known names like Theodore Bikel, Paul Ford, Jonathan Winters, and Brian Keith. They are all totally believable as small town archetypes. Aside from Reiner's occasionally grating performance, the other dud is Sheldon Collins as son Pete, who is directed to be the big mouth "cute" kid. Highly annoying!

Sheldon Collins as the highly irritating son of the Whittakers in 1966's
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

Joseph Biroc’s cinematography is beautiful and stylish; Johnny Mandel's warm, funny score is a big plus. The visuals are very strong, making great use of the locations, blending them in with the story, though the New England coastal community was actually shot along the Pacific coast. A few of such scenes: Ben Blue as he chases a horse around an open field in attempt to make like Paul Revere; Carl Reiner as he wobbly rides a small bike down a rural road; and the overhead shots of the small American boats acting as a flotilla for the Russian sub.

America's favorite past-time, mass hysteria, in 1966's "The Russians Are Coming!
The Russians Are Coming!"

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! is slightly overlong at two hours and five minutes, but it’s not elephantine like the three and a half hour Mad World. The finale is a bit forced, with future Family Affair star Johnny Whitaker dangling from a church steeple, which brings the Americans and Russians together to his rescue. But Russians is a comedy, not a hard-hitting social drama, and the ending with the locals escorting the Russian sub to safety is an appropriately feel-good moment that’s not totally out of place. Enjoy this stylish, sometimes silly, comedy with its stellar cast and good-hearted satire.

The locals give the Russians and their sub a send-off in 1966's
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

Here’s my tribute to Eva Marie Saint, a most intriguing Hitchcock blonde: https://ricksrealreel.blogspot.com/2019/07/eva-marie-saint-secret-weapon-of-north.html

Theodore Bikel's Russian ship commander offers a wave goodbye in 1966's 
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"

 

‘Wait Until Dark’ Slick Thrills, Stellar Cast 1967

"Wait Until Dark" a 1967 suspense film written by Frederick Knott, also had a
stage and film hit with "Dial M For Murder." With Alan Arkin & Audrey Hepburn.

If Wait Until Dark was ever remade, it’d have to be done as a period piece.

***Spoiler alerts are discussed throughout this review***

Though there are clever reasons for the villains' actions and plot twists (to show how resourceful the blind heroine is, while tormenting her needlessly), those plot points don't always add up. Alfred Hitchcock never got hung up on plots making perfect sense, as he relied on suspension of disbelief in service of thrills. This is all well and good, though some of Hitch’s lesser sleights of hand were audience head-scratchers. 

The film version of "Wait Until Dark" was a big hit in '67.

Adapted from the 1966 Broadway hit, Frederick Knott’s Wait Until Dark up close and personal film version shows the plot strings being pulled too obviously. Unlike Gaslight, another woman in distress stage play turned movie, there's no character depth beneath the chills. Watching the heroine's character trajectory in Gaslight works on several levels; in Wait Until Dark, the blind heroine proves resourceful in the face of danger, and presented heavy-handedly. The movie is well-acted enough so that you become invested in the characters. 

The plot of Wait Until Dark is a bit convoluted, but in a nutshell: A young woman, Lisa, runs drugs via a heroin-filled doll. Startled by the villain she sees at the airport, she gives the doll to stranger Sam Hendrix, to be collected later. She's intercepted by the movie's psycho, Harry Roat. And that's all she wrote! Roat lures two small time criminals to the Hendrix apartment and coerces them into shaking down the Hendrix couple to retrieve the doll. Sam thinks it's just a doll and he's away; wife Susy is totally in the dark—figuratively and literally—she’s blind. Roat engineers an elaborate gaslight on Susy to get the valuable doll. Game on!

Richard Crenna as Mike discovers Lisa, who discovered stealing drugs doesn't pay,
in 1967's "Wait Until Dark."

On the plus side, the set-up is clever and cast is first-class. On the minus side, there are a number of plot holes. If this movie had more depth of character and plot development, I would not have focused on the deficiencies. But when the characters and logic are as slim as Audrey's figure, the mind wanders.

The big one: Roat's psychopathic villain visits Susy in several elaborate character disguises to find the doll. Why? Susy's BLIND! 

"Nice disguise there, evil genius. Spoiler alert, I'm blind!" 1967's "Wait Until Dark."

The second big one: When Susy catches on to the thug trio's ruse, she enlists neighbor girl Gloria to go to the bus station to get husband Sam home to the rescue. There's a very patronizing undertone to Sam wanting Susy to be more independent after her recent accident-caused blindness. Susy’s rationale that "Sam will know what to do" rings very false. You send three killers looking for drugs on a fool’s errand, they are coming back to kill you, and you send a kid on a mission to the bus station, when she could just go upstairs and call the police?

Audrey Hepburn & Julie Herrod have a nice camaraderie as blind Susie Hendrix
and neglected upstairs girl, Gloria, in "Wait Until Dark."

And the third big one: Once Susy has the doll, why doesn’t she just give it to them? She was scared when she heard about the woman (Lisa) found murdered a block away. Now she knows they killed “Mrs. Roat,” does she want to be next?

Once Susy has the drug doll in her possession, why won't she turn it over?

Also, during the final black-out confrontation with killer Roat, he tells her game over as she tries to escape from her chained front door and he's found a light. Why? She still has a knife and matches, and he's still soaked in gasoline. 

Of course, it would be hard to film this movie in present day without major changes: the drug runner getting the doll through security no problem; the two ex-cons making themselves at home in the Hendrix apartment, leaving their DNA everywhere; and today, the three criminals would just get down to business and torture and kill the heroine until they got the doll. This is just for starters.

Audrey Hepburn is ideally cast as a sympathetic blind woman tormented in
"Wait Until Dark." Also in '67, Audrey made one of her best, "Two For the Road."

As a popcorn suspense film there are certainly some very clever twists and characterizations. Audrey Hepburn is a natural as Susy Hendrix, the self-described world champion blind lady. Empathy and warmth was the essence of Hepburn's persona. Hepburn plays the character strongly without overplaying and it is a stellar movie star performance. It's noteworthy that Audrey got the film's lone Oscar nomination. She makes you root for and believe in her, though the movie still has a foot in the studio era style: Audrey's Susy just may be the most stylish blind woman in the world. The thought of a blind woman with big false eyelashes made me smile. She even changes clothes in the middle of the movie, for no apparent reason. Also, Audrey gets lovely soft focus close-ups. Wait Until Dark makes this movie more of a throwback to classic ‘50s Hitchcock than a gritty late '60s thriller. Speaking of Hitch, I'm surprised nobody tapped him to do this film. He nearly worked with Audrey before, and also filmed the playwright's Dial M For Murder to great effect. But Terence Young does a solid job here and does the best he can with what was basically a one-set stage piece. 

Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix, a woman recently blinded, in "Wait Until Dark."

Lee Remick played Susy on Broadway to Robert Duvall's Harry Roat. I bet that was something to see. And though I'm sure Lee was just as good as Audrey, Remick was a leading lady who never carried a movie, where Hepburn was one of the few female stars of the ‘60s who could.

Lee Remick won a Tony nomination as Susy Hendrix in the Broadway version of
 "Wait Until Dark." Robert Duvall was Harry Roat. And Arthur Penn directed,
for whom "Bonnie and Clyde" was just around the corner!

Not having seen this in a number of years, I had forgotten how good Richard Crenna was as "Mike," the criminal pretending to be Sam's old war buddy. He offers what may be the most complex character. A con and crook, yes, but he's also taken by Susy's tenacity. He's the bad guy, but you want to like him! Jack Weston is good as the lowest functioning bad guy, Carlino, a bit of comic relief.

Jack Weston and Richard Crenna as two ex-cons coerced into retrieving a drug doll,
in 1967's "Wait Until Dark."

Alan Arkin has the showiest role as Harry Roat. I found him more interesting as the creepy criminal himself than in his various disguises. Humorous, creepy, sly and when he goes one on one with Susy, it's the hair-raising highlight of the film. The last set piece is very well done and I've heard many stories about how audiences in the dark involuntarily gasped and shrieked as Arkin's Roat goes after Hepburn's Susy.

Alan Arkin as the twisted, darkly humorous villain Harry Roat, in "Wait Until Dark."

One plot element and acting I found a bit smarmy: Sam Hendrix, the character and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., the actor. Given the fact his wife has been blind just a year, his tough love bit feels a bit like a husbandly bully, insisting that she "do" for herself. When Sam and the cops finally rescue her, they step over dead bodies, a trashed, gasoline-soaked apartment, and find a hiding Hepburn as Susy behind the fridge door. And Zimbalist's smiling Sam urges her to come to him! I wonder if a blind wife could kick her husband in the balls? And Zimbalist's acting is old-school Ronald Reagan variety, like a charming TV host, complete with a Hollywood tan—while playing a New Yorker.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. is Sam Hendrix, the photographer husband of blind Susy.

Julie Herrod as Gloria, the young girl upstairs, is natural, quirky, and appealing. She also played the character onstage with Lee Remick. Lisa, the doomed drug runner looks like a refugee from Valley of the Dolls, with the most obvious fall, and a more deadly doll than pills! Her stage name is Samantha Jones, which was later used as Kim Cattrall’s character in Sex in the City!

Samantha Jones is Lisa, a drug runner who looks like a runner-up for "Valley of the Dolls," complete with a fall and false eyelashes. Instead of "dolls," this doll has heroin!

The score by Henry Mancini is expertly eerie and the natural NYC location shooting gives this glossy thriller some needed grit.

Don't get me wrong, Wait Until Dark is still a fun thrill ride. Just don't look too closely at the story behind a blind woman's long night from hell.

Despite some serious gaps in logic, you'll be gasping in shock in the last act of
"Wait Until Dark."