If 1958’s Step Down to Terror seems familiar, it’s because it is supposedly a remake of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. That didn’t occur to me while I was watching it, but I was nagged by the feeling I had seen something very similar before.
Charles Drake plays a man on the run who seeks refuge in his childhood home in the suburbs. Two men are in hot pursuit of him, though we don’t who these people are, or why they’re after him. A foot chase takes a bizarre twist when Drake somehow goes from street-level to the roof of a multi-store building faster than I believe humanly possible. I was disappointed when it turns out he is neither Superman nor Spiderman.
If he’s anything, he’s super slimy. Once ensconced in his mother’s (Josephine Hutchinson) house, he immediately starts putting the moves on his dead brother’s widow (Colleen Miller), who also lives there with her young son (Rickey Kelman). Then he finds his attention diverted by a wealthy single woman (Jocelyn Brando).
The plot largely concerns whether or not Drake is a literal lady killer, wooing and offing wealthy women for their money. Those two men stalking him at the beginning of the picture turn out to be detectives on his trail. As played by Rod Taylor and Alan Dexter, these two undertake a preposterous ruse where they pose as newspaper reporters doing a piece on the typical American home. He is one of two suspects they have, so I found myself wondering what type of bullshit they will try in pursuit of that other suspect if it turns out Drake isn’t their man.
Weirdly, there isn’t any suspense in this setup because Drake seems to be positioned as the likely killer almost immediately. Heck, we never even see the other suspect. As soon as Drake gives Miller a ring engraved with “RD to JD”, anybody with half a brain would realize he has given her stolen goods, as those aren’t the initials of either character.
And we keep waiting for something eventful to happen with a broken step and, when it does, there isn’t much a payoff. This, after the title emphasizes this plot point and there’s even an illustration under the opening credits of a splintered stairstep.
While the movie lacks tension or surprise, the performances are roundly decent. I especially liked Kelman as Miller’s son, and he has the lion’s share of the best lines. Consider the assessment of a just-finished baseball game: “It was 34-8. We barely won” There’s also: “I was tired of being the only man in the house. I was developing a complex.” I was also amused by his lame magic show, but not because of his ability to make paper flowers spring up. Instead, I was wondering how he made a “SPROING!” sound effect happen on the soundtrack. Drake may not be Spiderman, but Kelman may have supernatural powers.
Step Down to Terror is largely a step down to mediocrity. There are worse ways to spend your time, but I can’t imagine anybody watching this and thinking it was in any way equal to, let alone superior to, the Hitchcock film it remakes.
Dir: Harry Keller
Starring Colleen Miller, Charles Drake, Rod Taylor
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIII