Harry Roat, Jr.

Harry Roat, Jr. (also known as Harry Roat, Sr.) is the main antagonist of the 1967 suspense classic, ''Wait Until Dark. ''

It was a revolutionary performance for villains, one of the first drug addicted psychopaths. He was portrayed by Alan Arkin.

Character Biography
A woman named Lisa (Samantha Jones) takes a doll stuffed with valuable heroin with her on an airline flight to New York City, but when, on disembarking, she sees a man watching her, she becomes worried and gives the doll for safekeeping to a man she'd spoken with on the plane, professional photographer Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). The man who'd been watching Lisa then roughly escorts her away. Later, when Lisa calls Sam about the doll, Sam and his wife, Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who is blind from an auto accident sometime before, are unable to find it. Some time afterward, small-time con artist Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and his partner Carlino (Jack Weston) arrive at the basement apartment where they expect to meet Lisa, their former partner in crime. No one is home, and unbeknownst to the two, the apartment is not Lisa's, but Sam and Susy's. Harry Roat, Jr. (Alan Arkin), whom the audience recognizes as the man who watched and met Lisa at the airport, arrives at the apartment; he is the one who set up the meeting. After discovering Lisa's body hanging in a garment bag, Talman and Carlino want to make a quick exit, but Roat points out that they have left their fingerprints all over the apartment, while he has made sure he has touched nothing but the arms of the rocker in which he was sitting, which he then wipes clean. Roat is then able to prevail upon the two to help him dispose of Lisa's body, explaining that he'd caught her going into business for herself. He also tells them about the heroin-stuffed doll and offers to cut them in if they help him find it. While the men are meeting, Susy comes home briefly and is observed by the men, who stay silent and undetected. The next day, Susy's neighbor leaves for the weekend, and Sam leaves on a wild goose chase photography assignment (in reality set up by Roat) to Asbury Park, New Jersey. Once Susy is alone, the criminals begin an elaborate con game. In order to gain entry into the apartment, Mike poses as a friend of Sam's, Carlino poses as a policeman, and Roat poses first as an old man and then as the man's son. Using first an innocuous story about Sam and the doll, then a darker one implying that Lisa has been murdered and that Sam will be suspected, the men persuade Susy to help them find the doll. Mike gives her the number for the phone booth across the street as his own after falsely warning her of a police car stationed outside. During this time, Susy has grown suspicious of Carlino and Roat, and Gloria (Julie Herrod), a girl who lives upstairs and is paid by the couple to help Susy with errands, has been going in and out of the apartment, sometimes without Susy's noticing that she is there. After Mike leaves, Gloria sneaks into the apartment carrying the doll, which she had stolen some time earlier. She tells Susy that there is no police car outside, and Susy discovers the doll. Wanting to confirm her suspicions about Carlino and Roat, Susy tells Gloria to go home and watch the phone booth. If a man goes into it, Gloria is to phone Susy, let the phone ring twice, and hang up. Gloria tells Susy that she can signal her by banging on the pipes. On Carlino's next visit, after he calls Roat at the phone booth, Gloria sends Susy the telephone signal, and she sends the signal a second time after Susy calls Mike to tell him she has the doll. Finally realizing that Mike, too, is a criminal, Susy hides the doll. When he walks in with Carlino and Roat following quietly, she tells him that the doll is at Sam's studio. The three leave after Roat cuts the telephone cord. When Susy bangs on the pipes, Gloria comes in, and Susy sends her to the bus station in a taxi to wait for Sam. When Susy discovers that the telephone cord has been cut, she prepares to defend herself by putting the criminals in the dark along with her, breaking all the bulbs in the apartment's light fixtures except for the one in Sam's photography 'safe light'. She also pours a chemical into a bowl. When Mike returns, he realizes that she knows the truth and demands the doll, but she refuses to cooperate. Mike has spent more time than the others with Susy, and he has come to admire her for her quiet strength and ability to stand up to the three of them, despite her disability. He admits to her that he and his confederates are part of a criminal plot and that Sam, as Susy suspected, is innocent of any involvement, while Roat is a particular danger. Mike assures Susy that she does not need to worry about Roat, as he has sent Carlino to kill him. However, having anticipated their plan, Roat has killed Carlino instead, and, as Mike prepares to leave, pausing to say something to Susy as he stands in the doorway, Roat stabs him in the back. Intent on acquiring the doll, Roat chains the door shut in the dark apartment, pours gasoline on the floor, and sets a piece of newspaper on fire. Susy finally agrees to give him the doll, and he puts out the fire. Susy throws the chemical at Roat's face and desperately unplugs the 'safe light' while Roat throws his knife at her, which misses and embeds itself in the wall as the apartment is plunged into darkness. Roat lights a match but hastily puts it out when Susy, having found the gasoline, starts splashing it in his direction and onto him. But the battle ends when Roat obtains light by opening the refrigerator, whose door he props open with a rag in the hinge. Susy, hearing the refrigerator come on, and weeping as she realizes that she has lost the battle, pulls the doll out from its hiding place and hands it to him. While Roat cuts open the doll and gloats over the treasure inside, Susy is able, unnoticed by him, to arm herself with a large kitchen knife. Roat then pushes Susy towards the bedroom, implying that he will now hurt her. He pushes her forward, then pins her to the wall and begins attacking her. Susy, repulsed, uses the knife to stop the assault and Roat collapses, seriously wounded. She flees but is unable to escape through the chained door. She stumbles across the floor toward the kitchen window to scream for help, but Roat unexpectedly leaps up from the floor and grabs her ankle. Screaming, Susy wrenches free, but the dying Roat doggedly pursues her, using the knife with which she stabbed him to drag himself across the floor. Susy is at the refrigerator, trying to close its door and thus extinguish its light, unaware of the rag that is preventing its closure. She then gropes for the refrigerator's cord, murmuring desperately, "Where is it?" She finally finds the cord and unplugs it, plunging the house into darkness. As the reeling Roat stands with his last strength and staggers toward her with the knife, Susy's scream merges with the sound of a police siren, and the scene switches to the arrival of police cars outside the apartment. When the police break open the door and enter with Sam and Gloria, Sam finds an unbroken light bulb, and we see the room littered with the bodies of Talman and Roat, but no Susy. Finally, as Sam calls out for her, the door of the unplugged refrigerator moves, and Susy emerges from behind it, safe.

Murders

 * Lisa
 * Carlino
 * Mike Talman