Step Down to Terror

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.