Cape Fear (1962 film)
Cape Fear is a 1962 film directed by J. Lee Thompson. It tells the story of Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), a lawyer whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist. The rapist, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum), wants vengeance for having been imprisoned on Bowden's testimony after the latter witnessed him attempting to rape a woman. After a lengthy game of cat and mouse between the two, Bowden takes his family to their houseboat on Cape Fear, hoping to set a trap for Cady that will lead to his re-imprisonment. Needless to say, this does not go as planned.
The film was remade in 1991 by director Martin Scorsese, with Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro portraying Bowden and Cady. De Niro and Juliette Lewis received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for their performances. In this version, Cady is out to get Bowden because the latter, while defending Cady on a rape charge, allowed possibly-exculpatory evidence about the victim to remain secret, leading to Cady's conviction.
Both films contains examples of:
- Ax Crazy: Max Cady.
- Gregory Peck & Robert Mitchum (both play supporting roles in the remake).
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Cape Fear.
- Scarpia Ultimatum
- Would Hit a Girl: Max Cady.
The 1991 remake contains examples of:
- Amoral Attorney: Gregory Peck's cameo as Cady's lawyer.
- As the Good Book Says...: Cady is a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and often quotes the Bible with wide-eyed furor.
- Ax Crazy
- Chekhov's Gun: The piano wire, the gun, and the lighter fuel.
- Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are
- Composite Character: Robert De Niro's Cady combines the original with another famous villain played by Robert Mitchum; Sinister Minister Harry Powell.
- Forgotten Trope: Viewers can be somewhat mystified by the premise for why antagonist Max Cady (Robert De Niro) felt slighted by protagonist Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte). At the time of release, the prior sexual history of a rape victim was a valid defense that would have lessened Cady's sentence, or might have even kept him out of jail. Nowadays, prior sexual history is inadmissible in rape cases.
- Genius Bruiser: Cady is both in exceptionally good shape and terrifyingly smart.
- Ironic Echo: In a meta-sense; where Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum played the upstanding lawyer and the sadistic rapist in the original, their cameo roles in the remake essentially place them on the opposite sides, with Mitchum playing a police detective sympathetic to Bowden's plight and Peck playing Cady's attorney.
- Large Ham: De Niro, in fine form.
- Made of Iron: Max gets beaten on for quite a while by some thugs, but as soon as he gets a weapon away from one of them, he takes them all down with ease. Later, Danielle throws some boiling water in his face, and he doesn't even blink.
- Police Are Useless: When Bowden suspects that Cady is stalking him, the first thing he does is go to the police, but they can't do anything because they lack any evidence of wrongdoing.
- Professional Wrestling: There wasn't any of it in the movie, but WWE based the short lived Waylon Mercy character on De Niro's portrayal of Cady.
- Remake Cameo: The remake featured cameos by Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, the hero and antagonist (respectively) of the original.
- Revenge: Cady's lust for revenge against Bowden fuels the plot and hits a lot of Revenge Tropes.
- Best Served Cold
- Buy Them Off: Bowden offers Cady $10,000 in cash to leave him alone. He doesn't take it.
- Revenge by Proxy: Bowden's MO is to brutalize and/or kill people close to Bowden to teach him the meaning of loss.
- Forced to Watch
- Revenge Through Corruption: Cady gets his hooks in Bowden's daughter, almost seducing her.
- Tattooed Crook: Max Cady.
- Underside Ride: Max Cady ties himself to the bottom Sam Bowden's car, causing the Bowden family to take him directly to the houseboat. This probably the most parodied element of the film.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: While it was highly unprofessional for Bowden to withhold evidence from the trial, it didn't excuse the fact that Cady had actually performed a brutal rape so Bowden felt Cady needed to serve the maximum sentence. Bowden defiantly points this out to Cady during the final confrontation. The nature of the evidence--the rape victim's sexual history--also helps with this, "shaming the victim" in such a sense being a particularly controversial defense in rape trials.
The 1962 film contains examples of:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Diane Taylor, who pays for it heavily.
- Ambulance Chaser: Cady's lawyer.
- As You Know / Let Me Get This Straight...: Sam Bowden's plan to deal with Cady is helpfully exposited by his wife.
- Blood From the Mouth
- Deliberately Monochrome
- Disproportionate Retribution
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Despite the overwhelming theme of sexual violence, the word "rape" is never used, nor does the dialogue get explicit. The closest the script comes is "attacked".
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Cady smokes Evil Cigars.
- Gory Discretion Shot / Nothing Is Scarier: When Cady attacks the girl at the hotel, her frantic grab at the door just pulls it shut, leaving only a narrow crack for the camera to see through.
- Ironic Echo: Cady mentions that when he "visited" his ex-wife, she tried to hit him with a poker. Nancy later attempts to hold Cady off with a poker the same way.
- Man in White: Cady.
- Never My Fault
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Savalas' character hires three thugs to deal one out to Cady. It turns out to be a case of Mugging the Monster.
- Private Detective: Telly Savalas.
- Rules Lawyer: As in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck plays one of these. He still manages to be the good guy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Diane Taylor.
- Shirtless Scene: Cady has several, all played for the same kind of menace as a Full-Frontal Assault.
- Smug Snake: Mitchum, to a T. That relaxed drawl of his is terrifying.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Bowden decides life in prison is better than death for Cady.
- Tranquil Fury: Mitchum has this quiet but insistent animal terror underlying everything he does.