Alfred Hitchcock was a film maker who was able to incite terror and enjoyment in audiences for a half a century. He did so in an era where films with a lot of blood splatter and dismemberment were unknown. The thing that the viewer can imagine is very often far more terrifying that anything that can be put up on the screen. From spy thrillers like The Man Who Knew too Much, to psychological thrillers like Psycho, to monster features like The Birds, Hitchcock was truly the master of suspense. There have been attempts to remake Hitchcock films. They have all failed and indeed were doomed to fail. That’s because no one could do it like Hitchcock and no one ever will.

Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt, written by the great playwright Thornton Wilder, takes place in the small town of Santa Rosa, California in the summer of 1941, the summer before Pearl Harbor and the coming of war to American changed everything. A teenaged girl named Charlie, played by Teresa Wright, is living a calm, uneventful life with her parents and two younger siblings. The most exciting thing that is happening is an extended visit by her beloved Uncle Charlie, after whom she is named, played with by Joseph Cotton. Uncle Charlie is suave, debonair, handsome, and—unknown to anyone by the audience at first—very, very insane. He is a serial killer, preying on widowed women, and he is on the lam, thinking that his relatives’ house is a good sanctuary. He doesn’t reckon on the intelligence and perception of his niece.

Murder is quite unknown to Santa Rosa, simply the topic of morbid conversation with a mystery fan neighbor played by Hume Cronyn. But slowly, steadily, Young Charlie starts to suspect the horrible truth about her Uncle and, slowly, subtly, Uncle Charlie’s behavior and demeanor begins to change. The outward, attractive veneer is stripped to reveal the hideous, insane core. Young Charlie escapes death several times, as Uncle Charlie tries to silence her, until, at long last, the final, brutal confrontation on the speeding train.