Sometimes, watching a film and its remake ass-backwards can be a shocking mistake to make. Watch the redux first – even one as top drawer as Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear – and you’ll miss all the subtle nods, twists and changes that have only been made because it’s predecessor did them (or the opposite) first. However, as much as I realise that it makes me something of a cinema blasphemer to say such a thing, I think watching the Scorsese/De Niro/Nolte mash up of the facts in the case of Max Cady, before tackling J. Lee Thompson’s original, yielded some surprising fruit.
While I would never suggest that anyone try it the same way (always watch your remakes second, kids), having already witnessed the deranged excesses of Scorsese’s take meant that I was completely unprepared for how coiled, controlled and completely menacing the first movie was. Less a film crammed with challenging shades of grey and more of a brutal test of upstanding morality, we essentially have Atticus Finch versus the Preacher Harry Powell and they lock horns and stretch the law to breaking point. Who do ya got?
Attorney Sam Bowden has something of a picturesque life as he exists with his perfect family in New Essex, Carolina. His wife Peggy and his 14 year-old daughter, Nancy, both revere him and he’s considered a fine, upstanding member of the community due to his job and his general, unshakable belief in the law. One day, all that is put to the test in an instant when Max Cady comes to town looking for something a bit more than sunshine and friendly people.
You see, Cady has just been released after an eight-year sentence for rape from a prison in Southeast Georgia and he’s come all the way to New Essex for some payback. Years earlier, Bowden managed to not only interrupt Cady’s attack on a young woman, but also testified against him in court and as a result, the unhinged thug has spent his time learning the law inside and out and plans to use it against the attorney and his family to get terrible vengeance. Approaching Bowden outright and fully revealing his intentions, Cady suddenly pops up all over the place whenever Sam and his family are out and about. Fearing about how vulnerable his wife and daughter could be with a vengeful rapist in the area, Bowden gets the police chief to try and harass his stalker out of town, but he soon runs into problems when they discover that Cady is keeping his hate campaign well and truly within the boundries of the law. Worse yet, whenever Cady does do something illegal (like feeding the Bowden’s dog strychnine) he’s cafeful enough that nothing can actually tie him to it.
With Cady turning up the heat, Bowden finds himself getting desperate and soon considers completely breaking the very laws he’s sworn so hard to protect. But even if Sam does resort to underhanded, illeagal measures to purge Cady from his life, will the scarily smart psycho actually fall into the trap?
While reviewing a film based on its own remake is horrendously unprofessional – even for me – comparing and contrasting the two versions by Thompson and Scorsese actually gave me a huge amount of appreciation for the original as I was watching it. Where the 1991 version concerns itself with blurring as many lines as it can from the start (Nick Nolte’s Sam Bowen has a history of infidelity and deliberately botched his job as Cady’s defence lawyer to ensure he went to jail), the 1962 vintage busies itself with the far more delicate task of attempting to corrupt Hollywood’s straightest arrow by having him meet an enemy who can throw the law he lives his life by right back into his face. Enforcing these boundries of black and white is some of the most intuitive casting you’re ever likely to see with Gregory Peck’s upstanding lawyer gradually bending under the weight of Cady’s vengeance – but fascinatingly enough, To Kill A Mockingbird wasn’t actually released until after Cape Fear came out meaning that Peck’s virtuous Atticus Finch followed in Bowde’s footsteps and not the other way round. In the other corner is Robert Mitcham’s swaggering, brutish Max Cady and shorn of Robert De Niro’s iconic grandstanding, he turns in a performance that virtually dripping with barely concealed menace (literally as the man is frequently shirtless and wet). There’s no prison tattoos here, but Mitcham is aided incredibly by that flawless Bernard Herrmann score (not even Scorsese had the balls to screw with that) and even though Thompson doesn’t have the grand guignol attitude of the famously exaggerated original, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t push the threat of unspeakable harm as far as it will go.
In fact, some of the ways the movie threatens it’s female leads with sexual assault would feel close to the bone now, let alone in 1962 and a story Max tells a clearly uncomfortable Bowden about the truly heinous revenge he took on his wife after she remarried after his imprisonment, is genuinely far more disturbing than anything the remake could come up with. Similarly, the finale goes worryingly far with both the manhandling of Polly Bergen’s Peggy and the stalking of Lori Martin’s fourteen year old Nancy, which really drives home just how ruthless and dangerous it’s sneering antagonist is. In fact, a fair comparison is to sync Mitcham’s Cady with that of Brian Cox’s portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s Manhunter; less flashy and famous, but far more subtle and all the more terrifying for it
However, the centre to the film is undoubtedly Bowen’s moral compass and how much battering it takes for him to abandon all that he holds dear in order to protect his family. First starting off with a little police harrassment and soon spiraling into hiring goons to rough his enemy up; watching Gregory Peck of all people backed into a corner by a man who quite easily manipulates the law he holds so dear is a legitimately unsettling sight. When it gets to Bowen outright plotting to draw Cady to him in order to commit “legal” murder and it predictably goes tits up, the film has perfectly subverted Peck honorable reputation, but the biggest twist proves to be something I didn’t see coming at all.
By the end of the film (spoilers incoming, by the way), Bowden manages to barely out fight his enemy and even has him at gunpoint, but rather than delivering the coup de grace and ending Cady for good, the movie takes a moral high ground that seems strangely extreme in its own way. Where other films would think nothing of ending it’s villain’s reign of terror with some fatal justice, Cape Fear ’62 audaciously has Bowden spare a wounded Cady, vowing instead to see him rot in jail until the end of his days. Some may find such a twist a bit too much to swallow – especially when someone as inhuman as Cady is virtually screaming for an end-of-act-III bullet – but when you realise that what they’ve truly both been fighting over is good old, law abiding decency, the original trip to Cape Fear proves to stick impressively close to its morals.
A fascinating and absurdly tense watch even if you haven’t seen other versions, the original Cape Fear holds its own impressively thanks to taunt direction, an appropriately upstanding lead and a truly imposing villain that’s equal parts cold, callous and savagely charismatic. Don’t let the fact it was made in 1962 fool you: it may not spray the red stuff like they did in 1991 and it’s certainly more sensible, but the steely glare and imposing presence of the original allows it to more than adequately hold its own.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 