This movie is creepy. To a small degree it's creepy in the way it intends: It does seem as if Harper Lee may have seen this before writing her lovely "To Kill A Mockingbird," also about children (here just one child) wrongly suspicious of an odd neighbor.<br /><br />In that novel, and the movie made of it, the children are very likable. Billy Grey is not, though possibly he was at the time. Maybe if I ha been a little boy seeing this at the time I would have identified.<br /><br />The fact is, though, the boy at the center of this is very troubled, constantly near the brink of hysterics. When he is acting like a boy, he is shooting a toy gun or making gun sounds. In a time capsule, this aspect would be interesting indeed but today it is distasteful.<br /><br />The original may well have had to do with the boy's worries about his mother's pregnancy. Would a new little girl (the whole thing seems very misogynistic) or little boy take away all her attention? Something, for sure, has made his kid a bundle of nerves.<br /><br />Nancy Davis has a thankfully small role and so does George Murphy. Kurt Kazsner as the eponymous stranger is good, as are the supporting players.<br /><br />The fifties gave us some fine music and art but a little item like this serves to remind, or show someone unfamiliar with that decade, what an unpleasant time it was, also.