Cape Fear (1962)

Since I had given away what I was going to review this week, I thought that I would first review the original version of the film released in 1962, “Cape Fear.” This unpleasant but suspenseful film noir is controlled with a steady hand by J. Lee Thompson and is based on the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. James R. Webb was responsible for the chillingly tight screenplay that plays on the terror a family man faces while trying to not only protect himself, but his family as well.

After he has served his eight-year term in a Baltimore prison for a vicious rape and assault, psychopath Max Cady, played by Robert Mitchum, is set free, clearly without parole (which messes up your head), and goes straight to the rural small-town in Georgia (filmed near Savannah) to confront and make a nightmare for the family man and famous lawyer Sam Bowden (the late Gregory Peck), his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen), and his teenage daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Max is out for revenge on Sam because he was a key witness at the trial that sent him to prison.

Once Max has stalked them and has been harassed by strong-armed methods by the police under Sam’s good friend, the chief of police, Mark Dutton, played by Martin Balsam, the court interferes on the side of the stalker and Sam finds out that his establishment records can’t stop Max from contacting him until he breaks the law – just being intimidating and sinister won’t be enough for causing the authorities to jump on quickly. For further protection Sam hires private detective Charles Sievers, played by Detective Kojak himself, Telly Savalas. However, that does not stop Max because he poisons Sam’s dog and makes gestures towards Nancy. When Sam can’t get Max to leave town, especially by bribing him with $20,000, he decides to take action by trapping this ex-con man by hiding Peggy and Nancy in his river houseboat in Cape Fear. He imagines that Max will come after them, hence getting this ex-con caught in the act of breaking the law; Sam will send Max back to prison for life.

This film shows flaws with the judicial system exposing how such a threat to the people has the ability to avoid the law and use it to make life unbearable for the good citizen. It shockingly shows how tolerable the law is and that the citizen has been brought to a point that violence is the only way he can protect his very own family.

Bernard Herrmann handled his scary score which effectively sets the mood, which is tensing. Mitchum’s arrogant life of an evil role, a put back from his role in “Night of the Hunter,” plays well as a balance to the scared but strong Peck role as the protector of his family by any means necessary – implying at its most insignificant the good bourgeois thinking.

In the end, I would say this film does show the effort, and is bone-chilling. I would rate this film with an 8. Check in for Friday when I review the 1991 Scorsese remake.