Well I saw the remake tonight, and it was awful by comparison. The runtime was 33 minutes shorter, so lots of details where left out, even though they followed the script to the letter.

They didn't spend much time choosing the right actors for the roles, but I figured they'd at least modernize the dialog to suit them. I mean, Eggar was pathetic belting out Stanwyck lines, and I kept thinking of the leading man as "Colonel Trautman", so I couldn't take Richard Crenna seriously anyway.

That's why it played more like the made-for-TV result of a studio with nothing better to do, but the kicker for me was that the plot begins in the same location used as the Dexter home in "Double Shock", the Brenner home in "Identity Crisis", the Surian legation in "A Case of Immunity", and I'm sure dozens of other Universal productions.

The second thing I noticed was that the furniture and decor we see in Brenner's living room was also used in the remake -- including the mural on the wall. Now is that a Columbo fan or what? I kept expecting Nelson to walk in, but that was 2 years before they even shot "Identity Crisis" there.

Neat stuff in deed ...

Is this the movie that stars Fred MacMurray? If its the movie I'm thinking of, then you might want to check out "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" with Steve Martin.

Yeah ... the original that is, and I've seen every Martin film up to "Roxanne", before he too became just another pathetic Hollywood bootlicker.