Reel Classics: Cape Fear

“In the annals of screen psy­chopaths, there are few who can top Robert Mitchum’s Max Cady in the 1962 ver­sion of Cape Fear.  A con­vict­ed sex offend­er who is released from prison after serv­ing a six year sen­tence, Cady is a walk­ing time bomb, bid­ing his time until he can take revenge …. Everything about him exudes men­ace, from his hood­ed eyes and insou­ciant sex­u­al swag­ger to his smirk­ing, undis­guised con­tempt for every­one he meets.  Mitchum was born to play this role and he applies the same relent­less inten­si­ty to the part that he brought to his por­tray­al of Harry Powell, the homi­ci­dal preach­er from The Night of the Hunter (1955).”

—TCM (Turner Classic Movies)

For those famil­iar with The Night of the Hunter (pre­vi­ous­ly reviewed here) you will know that there was noth­ing lik­able about Harry Powell.  You will not find any­thing warm or fuzzy about Max Cady either. 

The sto­ry opens with Cady being released from prison and track­ing down attor­ney Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), who had been instru­men­tal in his pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion.  Cady begins a cam­paign to ter­ror­ize Bowden as well as his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) and their 14-year-old daugh­ter Nancy (Lori Martin).   He stalks and glar­ing­ly leers at Peggy and Nancy, and quick­ly instills fear in them.  While doing so, he is quite care­ful not to cross any line, ensur­ing no inter­fer­ence from the police.  Cady con­tin­ues his efforts at instill­ing fear by killing the fam­i­ly dog, but Police Chief Mark Dutton (Martin Balsam), Bowden’s friend, can find no evi­dence against Cady.  His con­cern for the safe­ty of his fam­i­ly ris­ing, Bowden hires a pri­vate detec­tive, Charlie Sievers (Telly Savalas), to assist him.

In the mean­time, Cady picks up a young woman named Diane Taylor (Barrie Chase) and takes her home with him.  Cady bru­tal­ly assaults her, but she refus­es to press any charges out of her fear of Cady.  Bowden and the detec­tive try to con­vince her to go to the police, but to no avail. 

Eventually, Bowden decides to try to hide his wife and daugh­ter from Cady and takes them to a house­boat near Cape Fear in North Carolina.  He plans to set a trap for Cady, but events take a sin­is­ter turn.  Cady does locate them and sets about with his plan for revenge.  Needless to say, ten­sion builds as does the ter­ror with­in the Bowden fam­i­ly.  As men­tioned above, Max Cady “exudes men­ace” through­out this film.  No spoil­ers here.

Gregory Peck acquired the rights to John D. MacDonald’s nov­el The Executioners while work­ing on the film The Guns of Navarone.  He had recent­ly estab­lished an inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny and was inter­est­ed in adapt­ing the nov­el­’s con­cept for the screen.  He asked J. Lee Thompson, the direc­tor of The Guns of Navarone, to assist him with the project.  Changes had to be made to the sto­ry­line.  In the book, Max Cady was a sol­dier who was court-mar­tialed for the rape of a 14 year-old girl.  Sam Bowden was a Lieutenant who tes­ti­fied against Cady.  Censors did not allow the use of the word rape and also would not allow Cady to be depict­ed as a sol­dier as they claimed doing so reflect­ed poor­ly on the U.S. military. 

Thompson’s efforts with the use of black and white film­ing, cam­era angles, and the intrigu­ing musi­cal score smacks of Alfred Hitchcock.  Reportedly, Thompson was a fan of Hitchcock and uti­lized close-ups and sub­tle hints as opposed to graph­ic depic­tions of the “evil” that lurked with­in Cady’s mind.  Also, the musi­cal score was com­posed by Academy Award-win­ning Bernard Herrmann, who had also been involved in the music for Hitchcock’s Psycho, Vertigo, and North by Northwest.  Other films he was involved with include Citizen Kane and Taxi Driver. One oth­er note about the Hitchcock connection—the hotel where Max Cady takes Diane Taylor and assaults her is the same “house” that was in Psycho. 

Cape Fear was filmed in Savanna, Georgia; Stockton, California; and in the stu­dios.  Many of Mitchum’s scenes were not filmed in Savannah, as he had neg­a­tive mem­o­ries of the area from his teenage years.  As a teen, he was arrest­ed on charges of vagrancy and was placed on a chain gang.  Reportedly, he lat­er escaped and fled the area. 

Telly Savalas screen test­ed for the role of Max Cady but was cast as the pri­vate detec­tive Charlie Sievers.  Many will remem­ber him from the pop­u­lar TV show Kojak.  Also con­sid­ered for the role of Cady was Ernest Borgnine.  Initially, Robert Mitchum was not inter­est­ed in the role.  However, Gregory Peck and J. Lee Thompson were adamant that they want­ed him for the role.  They brought him a case of bour­bon in an attempt to sway him.  His response was, “Okay, I’ve drunk your bour­bon.  I’m drunk.  I’ll do it.” 

Besides Peck, sev­er­al actors were con­sid­ered for the role of Sam Bowden.  These includ­ed Charlton Heston, Jack Palance, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and John Wayne. 

Released in 1962, the film received pos­i­tive reviews, but con­cerns were expressed about its con­tent.  The under­ly­ing sex­u­al con­tent and the sadis­tic nature of Max Cady gave pause to some crit­ics and cen­sors. These con­cerns were no longer present in the 1991 remake, direct­ed by Martin Scorsese and star­ring Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, and Jessica Lange.  Scorsese’s film was much more graph­ic in nature com­pared to the sub­tle and implied behav­iors in the 1962 ver­sion.  However, 1962 and 1991 were very dif­fer­ent times.

Bosley Crowther, film crit­ic for The New York Times, described Cape Fear (1962) as hav­ing a “tough, tight script” and a “steady and stark­ly sin­is­ter style...this is real­ly one of those shock­ers that pro­vokes dis­gust and regret.”  He went on to say, “Menace quiv­ers in the pic­ture like a sneaky elec­tri­cal charge.  Mr. Mitchum plays the vil­lain with the cheeki­est, wickedest arro­gance and the most relent­less aura of sadism that he has ever man­aged to generate.” 

Variety’s crit­ic described the film as “com­pe­tent and visu­al­ly pol­ished” and described Robert Mitchum’s per­for­mance as a “men­ac­ing omnipres­ence.”  The crit­ics’ con­sen­sus from Rotten Tomatoes describes the film as “An exem­plary thriller pow­ered by Robert Mitchum’s chill­ing per­for­mance and Bernard Herrmann’s sin­is­ter score, Cape Fear seethes with per­fect­ly mod­u­lat­ed ten­sion.”  And, again from TCM:  “Mitchum’s per­for­mance is still hard to top in terms of his impos­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty and rep­til­ian-like menace.” 

In 2001 Cape Fear was includ­ed in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.  In 2007 Newsweek mag­a­zine iden­ti­fied Max Cady as on of the 10 best vil­lains in cin­e­ma history. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates Cape Fear at 7.7 out of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 92% and an Audience Score of 86%.  Upon check­ing my Roku device, I found no free stream­ing sites; how­ev­er, a copy of the DVD is avail­able at the Clark County Public Library.

If you’re in the mood for a dark, men­ac­ing, and dis­turb­ing thriller, then I encour­age you to seek out this clas­sic.  Robert Mitchum is at his best—or, is it his most evil? 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia. I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as the WinCity Voices Facebook page.