Movie review - "Step Down to Terror" (1958) **

A low-budget effort from Universal Studios, one of the few majors who were then still regularly turning out double features, based on a story by Gordon McDonnell, ‘Uncle Charlie’, which had been filmed by Hitchcock as Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Charles Drake plays the old Joseph Cotten role of the smooth talking widow-killer who returns to his hometown and earns the suspicions of his adoring niece (Colleen Miller). Rod Taylor plays an investigating cop, the same role played by Macdonald Carey in the Hitchcock version; the part is strictly ingénue: he falls in love with Miller and thinks of marrying her after one meeting, and manages to save the day at the end. The film was directed by Harry Keller, a Universal contractee who is probably best remembered today for re-shooting scenes for Touch of Evil (1958) after Orson Welles was removed from the project. Step Down to Terror is hampered by a very low budget and suffers in comparison to the complexity and flourishes that Hitchcock brought to the same story.