Step Down to Terror

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.

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'.

Immediately recognizable as a remake of Hitchcock's 'Shadow of a Doubt'. Charles Drake adequately replicates Joseph Cotten's initially bland, innocuous deportment, but the movie, trimmed down in running time and the shedding of several characters, a significant step down from the original, looks formulaic and becomes increasingly defined by Drake's predictable terror by numbers performance.

1) Becoming worryingly irritated and aggressive over an engraved ring. 2) Unconvincingly finding a lame excuse to tear a page from the local newspaper. 3) Colleen Miller's young son receiving a new bicycle puts a drastic spoke in his wheel, sparking bitter memories relating to a cycling incident from his own past. Shortly afterwards he 'accidentally' reverses his car over the gleaming dream machine, instantly reducing it to scrap metal. 4) When the family are selected to partake in a survey involving interviews and photographs, he stays out of sight, retiring to his bed with a mystery illness. 5) The manic, rambling 'world is a jungle' rant, populated only by two faced, rotten to the core, money grabbing hypocrites, hiding behind a wafer thin veneer of respectability.

Colleen Miller takes on the Teresa Wright role of the astute and dutiful family member, who rumbles that there is something monstrous; a dangerous phony lurking behind Drake's outwardly avuncular facade. A remake that need never have been remade. As such, it is rarely more than mildly interesting and moderately entertaining. When it comes to suspense, Hitchcock holds all the cards.

Charles Drake shouts at his landlady who has taken some of the cash he has lying about. She says the next time the policemen ask if he's in, she'll tell them. So Drake goes on the lam, back to his mother's home in California, where he makes nice to her, to Colleen Miller, widow of his brother, and her son, Ricky Kelman. As he courts Miss Miller -- as does plainclothesman Rod Taylor, something darker than expected begins to emerge.

It's a remake of Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and on its own terms, it's okay, another Universal movie about the darkness that lies at the heart of sunny 1950s America. Of course, because it's a remake of what happens to be my favorite Hitchcock movie, it seems weak in comparison. Still, for an ordinary programmer, it's all right. With Jocelyn Brando and Ann Doran.

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.