Last night's film was "Step Down to Terror"(1958), a psychological thriller in which handsome, 40ish "Johnny Walters" (Charles Drake) returns home to the Universal Backlot (the most picturesque neighborhood on Earth) to visit his aging mother (Josephine Hutchinson). Mom couldn't be happier. She loves him so, and he's been gone for six years, never writing. Johnny always was a mysterious boy, but oh well, he's back, and who knows, maybe he'll decide to stay. Not only would Mom love it, but so would "Helen" (Colleen Miller), his widowed sister-in-law, and her little son "Doug" (Ricky Kelman). Johnny can be a father figure to him now that brother Larry is dead from a bad heart (inherited from Mom).
Johnny arrives in a boss-lookin' T-Bird, with a trunkfull of presents, including a magic show kit for Dougie, which they premier that very night, complete with cut-out mustachios. Isn't Johnny wonderful? As played by Charles Drake, you'd be forgiven for thinking so. Besides his All-American persona and quarterback build, he has the countenance of a business executive or career military officer (which Drake often played). He lavishes Mom, Helen and Doug with attention and love. Sure, he has a few quirks; he doesn't like bicycles (because he almost got run over as a kid), and he gets debilitating headaches from time to time, but hey! He's Mr. Feelgood, kind of like Gilbert Roland in the Joe Martini movie the other night.
I said you'd be forgiven for thinking that Johnny is the ideal adult son, and you would be, if you missed the first five minutes of the movie. As it opens, we see him living in a rooming house back East, caring for his cat, and half-nelsoning his landlady when she tries to steal from his large stack of Benjamins.
Johnny is loaded. He's got enough cash to start a bank. Where did he get it? That's what we're gonna find out.
But for now, he's back home at the Universal Lot, and all is well. He's playing baseball with Doug, praising Helen's cooking, saint-worshiping Mom. Still, something is bothering him. Why did he tear the evening paper to shreds? Oh no. Is he getting one of his headaches? Or is he perhaps hiding a secret? He wouldn't happen to be a psycho by any chance, would he? Or even a serial killer?
Great googley moogley.
Enter a man named "Mike Randall" (Rod Taylor), allegedly a magazine reporter (think "Look"), doing a Day in the Life article about "the typical suburban family". He and his photog select the Walters household, of all people, and want interviews and pictures, all through the house. It all seems a little too convenient for Helen, who corners Randall and says "Who are you really?" Fessing up, he says, "We're agents looking for an Interstate murderer. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your brother-in-law is one of two possible suspects."
Johnny had earlier given Helen a sapphire ring as a present. It had initials inscribed on the back, and he sheepishly explained it as a prize from a card game. But now, with the upsetting news from Mike Randall, she sneaks out to the library (away from Johnny's prying eyes), and gets there right at closing time, 9 pm. I have to cut in to say I wish we had a Libe that stayed open til 9 pm. More than that, I wish there was a 24/7 library. I bet a lot of folks would support that idea. There's something so......tranquil.....about a library. Books and quiet people. And to have that in the middle of the night, say at 3:15 am - books, soft lighting and quiet people, and librarians behind the counter - there'd just be something magical about that.
But not for Johnny Walters, because at the library in the movie, Helen finds the issue of the paper from which he tore the article, and it's about an unknown serial murderer the cops are looking for. "He may move from state to state." Johnny was gone for six years. He never wrote in all that time, and now he tore that article out of Mom's paper so no one would see it.
By now, Helen knows he's a murderer, and has almost conclusive proof, because the initials on her sapphire ring match those of a victim mentioned in the newspaper. At home, she orders Johnny out of the house. "I'll give you a half-hour head start, but only because I don't want your mother to know." Mom has a bad heart, remember, and she loves Johnny to death. He's a good boy, it's just that he had that accident on his bike when he was little. His head always hurt after that.
The last 20 minutes is a cat and mouse game, and for a second there, I thought there'd be a twist, and that Rod Taylor would be the murderer. And Rod Taylor is another one of those actors who should be arrested, in his case for being too handsome. But the flick is, in part, a vehicle for Charles Drake to show that he can play a psycho, and he does an admirable job. I mean - good gravy! - he's nuttier than a jar of Planters Dry Roasted. Can Helen survive him? He's away now, at a PTA meeting with Mom and Doug, so she has a little while to phone Rod Taylor. He wants to marry her, even though he just met her that afternoon. "Step Down to Terror" has the feel of a Hitchcock, and man is the ending weird. All psycho murderers should be so well remembered. Two Bigs verging on Two Huge. a weird, weird movie. The picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, we found a light comic mystery involving couples, a love triangle, and a lie detector machine that promises to reveal "The Truth About Murder"(1946). As it opens, attorney "Christine Allen" (Bonita Granville, seven years removed from Nancy Drew, but every bit as excitable and charming), is testing out her new contraption on her boyfriend, "DA Lester Ashton" (Morgan Conway). "It's called a lie detector" she says. "It measures your blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration." Then she starts firing questions at him, like "do you ever think about marriage?" Ashton, captive and strapped down, with wires sticking out every which way, can't escape. He decries the machine, and Christine's choice of career. "Okay, sure I think of marriage, but I want my wife at home!" No dice, bub. Christine didn't go to law school to bake cookies. Ahh, but the DA still loves her, and we have our opening setup.
Now we move to our second couple, a high powered woman named "Marsha Crane" (June Clayworth) who runs an advertising agency, and her hangdog husband "Bill" (Edward Norris), who's become an alcoholic as a result of not wearing the pants in the marriage. Marsha, middle-aged and attractive, throws her weight around in their photography studio, showing a younger model how to pose, and even how to kiss the hunk she's posing with. Marsha revels in upstaging everyone. She's a Type A cougar.
Our third couple is the model hunk and his wife, the model who got upstaged. She doesn't like Marsha, but Marsha signs her paycheck. Now to our first murder. Agency rep "Paul Marvin" (Donald Douglas) shows up at the Cranes' swank apartment, to tell Bill that he and Marsha are in love: "You'd better face up to it, pal. She's leaving you." He shows Bill a love letter to prove it. Bill is devastated but understanding. He knew it was coming sooner or later. But then, Marsha turns up shot to death. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! Whodunit? It could've been many. Marsha was not well liked, except by Paul Marvin.
This movie is another vehicle for Bonita Granville to do her Nancy Drew Thing again, and because she's so good at it, we don't care when when the plot strays. We know the lie detector is going to reappear, or why would they have introduced it in the first place? So, as we watch the mystery unfold, we know the murderer has to be one of three or four guys. Then the hunk's wife is shot through a windum, just as she's about to reveal a clue. Bonita drives a huge, chrome-fendered sedan, also like Nancy Drew, only this time, we watch her pull out her compact to touch up her lipstick, an adult detail that Nancy would not yet have graduated to. And, we're missing her long-suffering Dad (John Litel).
We love Bonita Granville (see our Nancy Drew reviews from recent years), and she's basically reprising that character here; an energetic, independent gal - who still needs a man when she gets scared, but only for a moment - then she's off and running again, caught up in her own ideas. Single-minded all the way.
Toward the end, she and the DA, no closer to nailing down the killer, decide to throw a party and use the lie detector as a gag. "We'll get everyone to sit. I'll ask the questions." But one guest arrives early and unexpectedly. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Truth About Murder". The print was from a TCM showing (and razor sharp), so you know it's good if it's on TCM, and if you aren't a Bonita Granville fan by now, then you either haven't seen the Nancy Drews, or I don't know what to tell ya. She's a caution, as my Mom would say. ////
And that's all I know. 34 years ago tonight, I was inside a house at 9033 Etiwanda Avenue, at the end of an ordeal that had begun approximately 24 hours earlier, when I was forced, at gunpoint, from the sidewalk in front of my own house next door, to accompany a psychopath to the 9033 house. He lived there, next door to me. I didn't know him, but he sure knew me, or knew of me and about me. He hated my guts, and for 24 hours, he tortured me. Then, at around 7pm on Sunday night, September 3rd, 1989, I was rescued. Not by police, as you'd expect, but by other people, one of whom you'd know, and in fact, if you've been reading my blogs for a long time, you already do know his identity, as well as that of the loser who kidnapped me. I was very lucky to get out of his house alive. Among other things, when I was examined by a medic in the aftermath, my heart rate was close to 200 beats per minute. Then, I was taken away in a helicopter (much later that night), and the experience continued, and got ever stranger, for at least 10 more days.
I am nearing completion of the two books I've been working on for the past two years, and when I'm done, in addition to trying to get those books published, I'm going to begin another book, which will be an all-new version of my 2006 book, "What Happened in Northridge", which was never published. That book, while I am proud of the end result, was not as detail-oriented, in hindsight, as I would've liked. In the intervening 17 years, I've learned quite a bit more about the case than I knew then, so - as I've said - this new version is going to be the Jack Webb version, the CSI version, with every last detail scrutinized under a microscope. The first one was 800 pages. This one could end up being even longer, though I'm gonna make it as tight as possible. At any rate, I'm gonna start writing it sometime later this month, and I expect it to take me all of next year, including editing. If anyone reading was involved in the Event of September 1989, or has knowledge of it, and would consent to be interviewed, you know where to find me, and I would be grateful for your input.
My blogging music was "That's Why God Made the Radio" by The Beach Boys, and "John Barleycorn Must Die" by Traffic. I hope your holiday weekend is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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