I'd give this film a perfect score, a smidgeon higher than In a Lonely Place and The Big Sleep. This is a sign of personal bias based on how much I was entertained while watching this film. It's underrated and quite great, as suspenseful as Hitchcock's best. William Wyler's production and direction is masterful. I don't know what the reception for this film was like, but for audiences in the mid-50s, I can imagine this was shocking and modern. Is it the first home invasion in suburbia ever put on film? This is like watching Leave it to Beaver and seeing the Cleavers held at gunpoint with murderous bad guys one step away from killing or doing worse to June Cleaver. Ironically, the exterior shots of the home were actually used in the final seasons of Leave it to Beaver. However, if this film were made today, it would cross over into tawdry material with graphic rape, sadism, and other depravities. A remake with Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins in 1990 showcases other problems when you stray from the source material and go for cheap sensationalism.

Home invasions since the 50s, the real stories, were never this sanitized or melodramatic, but the tension is still palpable throughout the film. There is disturbing violence too, like when the older garbage man is carjacked and taken out to a desolate area of town to be killed. He realizes he's about to die and swerves his truck into a ditch while jumping out. He runs away and is shot dead. To see an innocent man shot in the back like this was jolting even to my sensibilities, I can't imagine how dark this was for audiences in the 50s.

What we have is a stageplay on film, taut and brisk at 100 minutes. It's a claustrophobic story in a suburban house with a family being held hostage for the entire duration. The dialogue is gripping and economical. It has bite and intelligence, heightened by Bogart's uncompromising and authentic performance. He's so menacing and calculated, and yet he moves urgently as if time is running out. This is a notorious convict on the run from police and he's leading two other dangerous men: one a big doofus with a temper who flies into rages like a child, the other a younger fellow who seems more dubious about their situation and may have a soft spot for the daughter. Bogart is the smart and natural leader whose chemistry with the father is electric.

I was riveted while watching this. It feels like one of the best thrillers of the 50s with incredibly modern subject matter and very little artifice or Hollywood tropes. That the father has to learn to be dangerous himself and defend his family with violence sublimated by civilization is almost a civics lesson. The novel was based on an actual event, the home invasion of the Miller family in 1952. There's no 50s sentiment, cheerful music, or naivety in the screenplay. This is gritty, sober, and unsparing. While it ends happily, we see the husband transform and discover how desperate he can get. This is in a class with Cape Fear (1962) and Night of the Hunter (1955) as plumbing darker depths of human nature. I already want to rewatch it.