Cape Fear

Rating:
Summary: The definitive suspense film
Review: From the "unjust Oscar snubs" file: Robert Mitchum gets no nomination for CAPE FEAR! Scandal? Robert Mitchum is Max Cady, the vengeful ex-con who stalks Gregory Peck's family in CAPE FEAR. Mitchum is superb. Absolutely, positively, superb. Never been better. Sure, he was great in OUT OF THE PAST and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, but this is his definitive film role. The movie crackles with suspense and tension between the two leads, both of whom execute their roles brilliantly. Robert Mitchum puts one of the most terrifying and believeable performances ever on film, while Gregory Peck performs to steely perfection. I can see the Academy's not nominating Gregory Peck. not that he wasn't good, it's a five-star performance, but he wouldn't have been able to win his Oscar for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in the same year, one of his most brilliant roles. If he could have one for both, I would've been all for it. But Bob Mitchum deserved a nomination! He deserved the Oscar! But noooo... Ahh. It's a great film, anyway. Rent it and watch it over and over again. It's terrifying by today's standards, and if you fall asleep, you're just inhuman.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous performance by Robert Mitchum!!!
Review: Man, oh man what a fabulous performance by Big Bob Mitchum there is in this 1962 Cape Fear! He was never better. This 1962 version is *much* better than Scorcese's remake and it's cause Mitchum is simply superb in the role of Max Cady. What a villian.......brrrrr! Mitchum's performance is so superior to De Niro's in the same role it just clearly demonstrates how much finer of an actor he was than De Niro can ever hope to be. Yes, Peck is weak in this film but who really cares when Big Bob sweeps into the scenes and just blows everybody away verbally. And that scene in the houseboat at night when he has Polly Bergen trapped and he is coming at her with his bare barrel chest dripping with swamp waters and then he gets her pinned against a counter and takes that raw egg and cracks it in his hand and rubs the yolk over her bare shoulders.........I get chills just thinking about it! Wow. No one has ever played a creepier guy than this and so believably. People always talk about Mitchum and Night of the Hunter but he's even *better* in Cape Fear.

Rating:
Summary: A truly remarkable film (definetly worth six stars or more)!
Review: This has got to be one of the all-time most suspenseful films ever made. Mitchum's portrayal of the sinister and malicious Max Cady is an excellent example of what good acting is all about. He is able to get at the heart of his character and give Cady the relentless driving force which is demanded of the role. His performance (which runs rings around DeNiro's forgettable attempt) is perhaps only rivaled by his performance in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Mitchum's scenes during the climax were not only absolutely terrifying for their time but also compared to many of today's thrillers. Peck, who has usually such a strong screen presence, didn't live up to this viewers expectations. However, he does do a note-worthy and convincing job as the terrorized attorney. Much, much better than Scorcese's remake. A must for anyone who appreciates edge-of-your-seat thrillers.

Rating:
Summary: Seeking for revenge!
Review: The forties , fifties and early sixties decades were somehow the golden ages of the film noir. However this last one had a major scope due the world's configuration . The Cold War `s phantoms (Crimson kimono, Manchurian candidate, Pick up on South Street), the fear for nuclear weapons (Kiss me deadly) made the scriptwriters turn their eyes for new profiles about the noir film. Even it found the criminal had his sensible heart -Rififi- and his weakness-Bob le flambeur- .

In this case, the legal aspects opened a huge gate for inspirational motives. Cape fear emblematizes as any other film in the fifties, the revenge in its purest and wildest fierceness. This brutal tale deals about a man who after being released from prison has not forgot who sent him. No matter if he was guilty or not; the point is he lost several productive years of his life and that issue has to be paid. Sadism and merciless punishment will be the cards he will display in this dark and fulfillment thriller. Mitchum stole the show as the out of mind criminal who will chase physic and psychological to the lawyer Peck till unimaginable consequences.

Chilling portrait, and febrile tension in this cat and mouse chess game. A must see, a noir film classic and one of my personal cult movies ever.


Rating:
Summary: Top-Drawer Thriller, With A Dandy Bernard Herrmann Score!
Review: That Max Cady is one scary dude! No doubt about that. Portrayed to perfection by Robert Mitchum, Cady is presented with full intensity in 1962's original "Cape Fear", one of my favorite movies of this genre. We get the impression, and rightly so, that Mr. Cady is relentless in his pursuit of Sam Bowden and family. Nothing is going to stop him. And Sam (Gregory Peck) knows this too. Therefore, drastic measures are needed to fight this awesome menace. Watch and see how it suspensefully unfolds. Many memorable scenes -- scenes that look all the greater thanks to the handsome-looking enhanced Widescreen print presented on this DVD. The black-and-white photography looks solid as a rock on this disc.

Bernard Herrmann did the music score for the 1962 version of "Cape Fear", and Herrmann's music adds much to the atmosphere of the picture (as is always the case with one of his scores). It's yet another stellar effort by Mr. Herrmann.

The 1991 remake of "Cape Fear" (starring Robert DeNiro) is very nearly as good as this 1962 original. The remake features additional layers to the already-competent plot that add to the enjoyment of that picture.

However, I think that the original film still outshines the remake. The combination of Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Polly Bergen provides this film with a very good trio of actors to build a picture around.

I've always liked Polly Bergen in everything I've ever seen her in -- from her always-delightful and witty appearances on TV's "To Tell The Truth" game show, to this role in "Cape Fear", to her comedy roles as well.

Gregory Peck had a good calendar year of 1962. He made "Cape Fear", plus two other big-name films that same year: "How The West Was Won" and the incomparable "To Kill A Mockingbird". Not a bad year's work for any actor.

Keep an eye peeled for some other fine supporting players dotting the cast of "Cape Fear" -- like Telly Savalas, Martin Balsam, Edward Platt, and Will Wright. For Wright, who was in literally hundreds of TV shows and feature films, "Cape Fear" would mark his last movie appearance. He died on June 19, 1962, very shortly after this movie was filmed. BTW -- In case you blinked and couldn't spot Will Wright in "Cape Fear" -- he appears for just a few seconds near the beginning of the film, as "Dr. Pearsall", a courtroom witness being questioned by lawyer Peck.

This Universal DVD isn't a "Special Edition" by name, but some really good bonus supplements adorn the disc nevertheless, including the Theatrical Trailer, a Photo Gallery, DVD-ROM features, and text notes on the production and the cast & crew.

Also included on this single-sided disc is a 28-minute behind-the-scenes featurette ("The Making Of Cape Fear"). This mini-documentary has film clips and contemporary interviews with star Gregory Peck and the film's Director, J. Lee Thompson. These interview segments with Peck and Thompson must have been recorded just shortly before both of these men passed away. Mr. Thompson died on August 30, 2002; while, just ten months later, we lost the great talent of Mr. Peck on June 12, 2003 (which was a terrible month in this regard, with several big-name Hollywood stars slipping away from us during that very same month of June 2003).

Some DVD Specs .........................

> Video is 1.85:1 Widescreen (enhanced for 16x9 monitors).
> Audio is Mono (2.0 DD; English only).
> Subtitles in English and Spanish and French.
> Film length is approx. 106 minutes.
> Paper insert is included, with a Scene Index for the 18 chapters on the DVD.

--------------------------------

"Cape Fear" (1962) should certainly keep any first-time watcher on pins and needles; and towards the end of the movie there'll be no need for the bulk of your chair at all -- just the "edge" of your seat will be required. The film holds up very nicely the 21st time it's viewed as well. A 'classic' always does.

Rating:
Summary: THIS is a CLASSIC?
Review: I expected this movie to be a hard-hitting classic thriller like "Night of the Hunter" or "Spellbound". I was astounded by the choppy storyline, bad editing, and terrible makeup and hairstyles (helmet heads everywhere -- not even in style when this film was made!).

The casting was bizarre. Where did they get that weird kid? And the mother? What was with the mother's grunting-style-acting when her husband was looking for her on the houseboat? And back to the weird kid, who was too small for her age to play the part (she looked like a Raggedy Ann doll on steroids) -- why did she run back into the school? Script doctor, anyone?

The only good part of the movie was Robert, who could stand there in his skivvies and read his laundry list and I'd be entertained. The three stars are for my boy Robert.

You may not believe me, but I have to say this is not a good movie. I was surprised at the lack of quality.

Buy "Night of the Hunter" instead, or any Hitchcock film. Why waste your money?

Rating:
Summary: Nail biters beware.
Review: It was common practice by the sixties for actors to produce their own films and then arrange distribution deals with the major studios, which was a trend born in the late forties that signaled the dwindling of the old Hollywood studio system. There was Burt Lancaster, one of the first, who created his company in '48, Humphrey Bogart and Santana, John Wayne and Batjac, and now we have the stars of our movie, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, coming together to co-produce this menacing peek into good and evil that no doubt left audiences wet in their seats. Peck had been searching for a thriller and found the right ingredients in John MacDonald's book The Executioners. James Webb threw together a script based on the novel and Peck himself supplied the title for the movie when, after scouring the eastern seaboard for apt-sounding locations, came across the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

Gregory Peck stars as Sam Bowden, a southern lawyer with the ideal southern wife, Peggy (Polly Bergen), the ideal teenage daughter, Nancy (Lori Martin), and an ideal life, with a dog, a spacious home, and good standing in the community. But this veneer of comfort is soon disrupted when ex-con Max Cady (Mitchum) pops up after "eight years, four months, and fourteen days" in prison, a stretch he heaps completely on Sam's "unjust" doing because Sam was a key eyewitness in Max's conviction for brutally assaulting a woman. He proceeds to play a cat and mouse game of stalking Bowden and his family, and Sam is legally powerless to do anything to stop Cady, despite the help of the local police chief (Martin Balsam) and a private detective (Telly Savalas). Eventually, he pays to have three local ruffians beat Cady up in an attempt to make him leave town, and when this backfires, Sam finds himself possibly facing disbarment. Required to attend a hearing on the matter out of town, Sam uses the opportunity to set a trap for Cady. He arranges for his wife and daughter to spend time at a houseboat on the Cape Fear River, hoping that Cady will try for them. Meanwhile, Sam secrets himself in the swamp near the houseboat in hopes of catching Cady in the act and then dealing with him once and for all.

Notice also how the word "rape" is never used in the film. Censor codes prohibited it, and demanded that there be no overtones that Cady plans to rape Nancy, the daughter, but it is apparent that's just what he means to do, both in dialogue ("Your daughter is getting to be just as juicy as your wife") and in action (when Nancy becomes trapped alone in a house with Cady).

This was the same year Peck won his only Oscar for his role as Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the year following his starring role in the great WWII espionage thriller The Guns of Navarone, so he was really at his career's peak. Even though he's the star in our film, it's Mitchum's party all the way. His performance here is deadly. He plays with such deftness a man balancing his seething inner venom with an exterior that is reserved and almost genial, always peering out with his trademark sedated quality, with those hooded eyes. Despite the dreadful things we already know about him - that he abuses women, his prison sentence, his stalking the Bowdens - what we don't know about him is infinitely enthralling. He even arouses morsels of sympathy when he informs Sam over a drink how his wife and kid left him when he went to prison.

Peck's problem is that his character is so idealized that he really doesn't have much dramatic legroom - Sam and Peg never squabble, he has a good relationship with his daughter, he leads a Leave-It-To-Beaver kind of life, so there's no tension in those areas. One of the changes Martin Scorsese made in his 1991 remake of Cape Fear was balancing the character of Sam Bowden with that of Max Cady by injecting more dramatic friction in the Bowden family. In the remake, Sam sleeps around on his wife, they lead a tenuous marriage, and his relationship with his daughter suffers because of it. However, Peck does go through considerable turmoil as he is stretched to the limits in his strife to counter the threat Cady poses, and seeing Gregory Peck, a man portrayed throughout cinema as a model of righteousness, eventually plot to kill Cady in cold blood is quite thrilling.

Rating:
Summary: a study in remakes
Review: I remember watching this movie when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was impressed by a variety of aspects of the movie. Most of all, I was impressed by how utterly evil Robert Mitchum's character was. I was led to believe this by a number of suggestuive scenes. There was one with a lady he picked up. The police later came to interview her to try and get her to testify against him because of what he did to her. She was so terrified that she wanted nothing to do with it. Exactly what he had done to her was left up to our imagination. There was another scene that I would never forget. Initially, I couldn't understand it. Years later, when I saw the movie as a young adult, I was amazed at the power of the symbolism. It was a scene in which Mitchum smears a raw egg over a scared Polly Bergen. I often think of that scene as the difference between movies made in the "old days" and the ones of today. In that scene we have the suggested image of rape that isn't cause to send the younger viewers out of the room.

The remake of "Cape Fear" is probably an enjoyable movie for those who hadn't seen the original one. However, it serves for me as an example of how movie making has lost its' art of suggestive imagery. The remake spells out things a lot more even to the point of obsurdity. As example of obsurdity, consider how Robert DeNiro managed to "follow" Nick Nolte's family to its' hideout. I won't spell it out for those who haven't seen the movie. However, if you think about it, it really isn't possible that it could have actually happened. He would have either been killed or severely burned.

Hollywood had a talent that enabled it to make movies for viewers on all levels. Sure, there were romantic movies that juveniles wouldn't enjoy, shoot-em-up westerns that teenage girls wouldn't enjoy, etc. etc.. However, picking out a pre-1970's movie for the family to watch isn't the moral dilemna that modern movies pose. We either get the simplicity of Disney or the depravity of the R rated with little in between. The original "Cape Fear" had all of the suspense and evil that its' remake had. It was a sort of interactive movie that allowed the viewer to see it on their own level. The remake, while fairly "tame" for a modern R rated movie, puts it all on the screen to see. I realize that it is the audience that fuels the trends. We seem to demand more and more special effects, gore and sex. The original "Cape Fear" is an example of artistic talent that is sacrificed in such a trend.