Step Down to Terror

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.