Could not have happened this way (SPOILERS)

My husband recorded this because we like mysteries and Hitchcock in particular. Just got around to watching it and was very disappointed to say the least.

It was interesting how they changed the script enough so it wasn't an exact copy (which I have never understood why anyone would bother) but then didn't give the characters enough development. All of the neighbors are flat, stereotypes that do nothing. The assistants, nurse and aides, are fine for what they are but there is never the interest that Thelma Ritter gave to the original.
I could not think of how they would cause any tension at all with Reeves being nearly totally helpless but having the elevator and pc was an interesting construct. Almost worked but not quite-I do remember this is a TV movie.
The whole thing fell apart at the end. I was so hot about it my husband apologized for taping it! I had blinked or turned away for a second and did not realize the pan to the bronze in the last shot was to the gallery upstairs from the Thorpe apartment.

In any case, the body is NOT in that sculpture; obviously a second casting.
Bronze casting is hollow. Her body was put in the base of the original and would have remained inside the original sculpture. A mold is made of the original and a hollow bronze casting is made. Apparently, this was done twice, but her body would still be in the original sculpture.
Are we to believe, and this is never explained in the least in the movie, that he took her body out of the original, which never came back to his studio, and put it in the base of the second casting? Please, this is ridiculous. The police would have never checked to see where the lobby casting was made and shipped from and questioned if there was only one cast made?

Perhaps if it had been developed a bit more to explain the process or anything to let the viewer know that the body was in a different sculpture than the one in the lobby we could have believed it. Perhaps showing that the gallery upstairs only had original works and his was on display there, with the body encased in the base and shipped there after the bronze casting was made-now that would have been believable and a switch.

Having Thorpe get away with murder is alright with a remake but, please, make it logical and believable where he hid the body.

I too think this was an attempt, and not a bad one, to give Reeve something he could star in. The idea was sound but the script just didn't quite make it.

Very few remakes are good ones and those that are usually outshine the previous because of time more than anything else. Some worth while ones come to mind based on this: Cleopatra, Ben Hur, Imitation of Life, The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock redoing himself!), several others. The ones that fail would take up an entire page.

Worth watching? maybe.


"Hey, be nice. No matter where you go; there you are."