After I watched this movie in the comforts of my own home, I really wished I could have lived at a time when I could have gone to a cinema on halloween night, 1967, and witnessed how the theater really was darkened to the legal limit so that the last 8 min. would be as scary as possible.
This really is a milestone picture in the horror genre, just like Psycho before it and Halloween after it. It has many imitators that try to re-create a horror story, but fail. Even if the initial scare doesn't make you jump, (which, by the way, it probably will,) You will remember this when you are alone. After you wake up from a nightmare where an unseen evil is stalking you, you will think to yourself how would you protect yourself if you no seeing ability, or even if you could somehow make a defense. This is not a story of the supernatural, like in Halloween, a monster movie, like Alien, or a Bad-guy-that-won't-die movie, like in Friday the 13th. This is a story, where we are given the plot as if we are reading it from a book, where all the characters have emotions and motives for their actions, and where sometimes we find ourselves just as confused and blinded as Audrey Hepburn is, and that is what makes the terror real.
This really is a milestone picture in the horror genre, just like Psycho before it and Halloween after it. It has many imitators that try to re-create a horror story, but fail. Even if the initial scare doesn't make you jump, (which, by the way, it probably will,) You will remember this when you are alone. After you wake up from a nightmare where an unseen evil is stalking you, you will think to yourself how would you protect yourself if you no seeing ability, or even if you could somehow make a defense. This is not a story of the supernatural, like in Halloween, a monster movie, like Alien, or a Bad-guy-that-won't-die movie, like in Friday the 13th. This is a story, where we are given the plot as if we are reading it from a book, where all the characters have emotions and motives for their actions, and where sometimes we find ourselves just as confused and blinded as Audrey Hepburn is, and that is what makes the terror real.