Step Down to Terror

Having acted alongside Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Dennis Hopper and Earl Holliman in 'Giant', the 28 year old Rod Taylor continued to get roles alongside high profile actors and actresses until his big break came in 1960 with 'The Time Machine'.

Avoid any comparison with Hitchcock's masterful "shadow of a doubt" ,its remake would suffer ; nobody here can match the Teresa Wright/Joseph Cotten pair ,and the director can't begin to touch the master's genius of suspense of psychological tension .Thornton Wilder and Alma Hitchcock had dramatically enriched the original story ,by creating lots of new characters ,all more colorful than the one before .

In the family where the uncle takes refuge, there are only three persons; the mother ,the widowed daughter-in-law and her son ; the detective (played by Rod Taylor ,later star of Hitchcock's "the birds") plays a more prominent part than in the 1952 version,and he quickly falls in love with Helen ,the niece (there's no love/hate relationship between her and her uncle ) ; the ring is a good trick , so is the crushed bike .The film is rather short (about 75 min) and sometimes the events are too hurried for comfort; the denouement is rather poor and implausible .

Charles Drake is handsome and quite convincing when he charms the old ladies .

Needless to say ,you will always be better off with the fifties version.

This film noir has essentially the same story as Alfred Hitchcock's famous film of 15 years previously, A SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943). According to the IMDb entry for Gordon McDonell, he was a writer for both films, though he does not actually appear in the IMDb listing for the Hitchcock film. There are considerable differences between the films. In this one, the happy family has a young son, played by Rickey Kelman. But the Hitchcock film's happy family had a daughter, played by Theresa Wright, who was well known by that time and much older than Kelman. The story in both cases involves the uncle of the children turning up unexpectedly at the family home to stay with them for a prolonged period. The children in both stories have never seen him before, as he is the brother of their deceased father who had been out of touch with everyone for years. The uncle is very handsome and charming and an interesting and well-travelled person. So at first everyone is thrilled. But there is a slight problem: he is psychopathic killer on the run, hence really hiding out with the family. Naturally, the Hitchcock film is superior, in which the uncle is played by Joseph Cotton. But in this film he is played very well indeed by the less well known Charles Drake, perhaps even in some ways more convincingly. The title chosen for this film is rather silly, though it does refer to one minor detail in the story. Rod Taylor makes a significant appearance in the film at an early stage of his career, aged 28, and does very well. The film is certainly effective and is not just a pale copy of the Hitchcock film.

Based on the title, I initially thought Step Down to Terror was going to be a horror film. I soon realized my error. That's fine because I was also up for a good suspense film and always happy to see Rod Taylor. Step Down to Terror isn't completely lacking in suspense, but unfortunately, there just isn't enough of it. For starters, I think the film takes to long in the set-up before it actually gets really interesting. Then when it does get interesting and suspense starts it's fairly quickly snuffed out when the female lead oddly, and unfortunately for everyone involved, including the audience, decides to put everything out there. The very ending scene is odd and seemed like a last minute kind of thing.

Wow, I'm the only 10 star review??? I don't know why B movies receive negative criticism. From a cinematic standpoint, some of them are more impressive than A-list movies. You can't underestimate a small budget and a lesser known cast of actors and actresses. I guess I feel that way because I've never been crazy about movies that are popular with the general public. I've watched movies, older and newer, that people rave about, and I didn't see what the big deal was. There's a lot of underrated gems that the majority of people don't even know about, and I'm so happy they're on YouTube.

The beginning of Step Down to Terror wasn't groundbreaking. It was quite simplistic, actually - a man running away from the cops, then some time later, standing on a front porch and hugging his mother - but it caught my attention. Johnny Williams (Charles Drake) is dodging the law, and decides to hide out in the home of his mother (Josephine Hutchinson), sister-in-law (Colleen Miller), and nephew (Ricky Kelman). Unbeknownst to them, he's a serial killer, and he only murders widows, and that happens to be his sister-in-law. His brother nearly died as a child in an accident involving a bicycle, which he blames himself for (I don't know if the writers meant to do this, but it was implied that he has PTSD. Chances are, I'm sure that was unintentional, because not much was known about the disorder back in the 50s. Looking at it through a modern day lens, not receiving treatment pushed him over the edge, leading him to become homicidal). I love watching the type of movies where the main character isn't who everybody thinks they are, and they have to go to great lengths to hide their true self. It was pretty sad at one point though, because Johnny's nephew was excited to have him around, seeing as how his father was deceased, but Johnny was so opposed to him having a bike, out of the fear that originated from his brother's accident, that he waited until no one was outside to run over it with his car, and when his nephew discovered it was destroyed, he acted like he had no idea what happened. He starts acting strange, to the point that his mother and sister-in-law notice. Well, more so his sister-in-law. She suspects that he's hiding something sinister. My only complaint, is the ending seemed rushed, a common thing with B movies. Nonetheless, I can easily watch this more than once. Also, I didn't find out this was a remake until after the fact. Honestly, I have no desire to watch the original. I enjoyed this so much that I'm not even curious.

By the way, Charles Drake was handsome. This movie was somewhat true to life. While all of them aren't murderers, handsome men are generally unbalanced. If you haven't already seen this, it's worth a look. Don't pay attention to the low reviews.