Cape Fear (1962 film)

This article is about the 1962 film. For other uses, see Cape Fear (disambiguation).

Cape Fear is a 1962 American psychological thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson, from a screenplay by James R. Webb, adapting the 1957 novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. It stars Gregory Peck as Sam Bowden, an attorney and family man who is stalked by a violent psychopath and ex-con named Max Cady (played by Robert Mitchum), who is bent on revenge for Bowden's role in his conviction eight years prior. The film co-stars Polly Bergen and features Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Jack Kruschen, Telly Savalas, and Barrie Chase in supporting roles.

Cape Fear
Film poster
Directed by	J. Lee Thompson
Screenplay by	James R. Webb
Based on	The Executioners 1957 novel by John D. MacDonald
Produced by	Sy Bartlett
Starring	Gregory Peck Robert Mitchum Polly Bergen Lori Martin Martin Balsam Jack Kruschen Telly Savalas Barrie Chase
Cinematography	Sam Leavitt
Edited by	George Tomasini
Music by	Bernard Herrmann
Production companies	Melville Productions Talbot Productions
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	June 15, 1962 (1962-06-15)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.8 million (US/Canada)

Produced by Peck's company Melville Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures, the film includes several key cast and crew who had previously worked with director Alfred Hitchcock, including editor George Tomasini and composer Bernard Herrmann. J. Lee Thompson's direction was also strongly influenced by Hitchcock.

The film was released on June 15, 1962. It received positive reviews from critics, who highlighted Peck and Mitchum's performances. A remake of the same name was released in 1991, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro in the lead roles. Peck, Mitchum, and Balsam all appeared as different characters in the remake.

Plot

In Southeast Georgia, Max Cady is released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for rape. He promptly tracks down Sam Bowden, an attorney whom he holds personally responsible for his conviction because Bowden interrupted his attack and testified against him. Cady begins to stalk and subtly threaten Bowden’s family, including his wife, Peggy, and 14-year-old daughter, Nancy. He kills the family dog, though Bowden cannot prove that Cady did it. A friend of Bowden, Police Chief Mark Dutton, attempts to intervene on Bowden's behalf, but he cannot prove Cady guilty of any crime.

Bowden hires private detective Charlie Sievers. Cady brutally rapes a young woman, Diane Taylor, when he brings her home, but neither the private detective nor Bowden can persuade her to testify. While Nancy is waiting in a car one day, Cady begins to walk near her, causing her to run and end up almost getting hit by a car. Bowden takes matters into his own hands by hiring three thugs to beat up Cady and to coerce him to leave town, but the plan backfires when Cady manages to fight back and get the better of all three. Cady's attorney vows to have Bowden disbarred.

Fearing for Peggy's and Nancy's safety, Bowden takes them to their houseboat in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina. In an attempt to trick Cady, Bowden makes it seem as though he has gone to Atlanta. He fully expects Cady to follow his wife and daughter, and he plans to kill Cady to end the battle. On a dark night, Bowden and local deputy Kersek hide in the swamp nearby, but Cady realizes that Kersek is there and drowns him, leaving no evidence of a struggle. Eluding Bowden and setting the houseboat adrift down the current, Cady first attacks Peggy on the boat, causing Bowden to go to her rescue. Meanwhile, Cady swims back to shore to attack Nancy. Bowden realizes what has happened, and also swims ashore.

The two men engage in a final fight on the riverbank. Bowden manages to grab his gun, which he had dropped, and shoots Cady, wounding and incapacitating him. Cady tells Bowden, "Finish the job", but Bowden decides to do the thing that Cady earlier told him would be unbearable – put him in prison for the rest of his life, to "count the years, the months, the hours". In the morning light, the Bowden family are together on a boat, traveling with police back to port.

Cast

• Gregory Peck as Sam Bowden
• Robert Mitchum as Max Cady
• Polly Bergen as Peggy Bowden
• Lori Martin as Nancy Bowden
• Martin Balsam as Mark Dutton
• Jack Kruschen as Dave Grafton
• Telly Savalas as Charlie Sievers
• Barrie Chase as Diane Taylor
• Paul Comi as Garner
• Page Slattery as Deputy Kersek
• Will Wright as Dr. Pearsell

In addition, Edward Platt, the future "Chief" on the television series Get Smart, and November 1958 Playboy Playmate centerfold Joan Staley make brief appearances as a judge and a waitress, respectively.

Production

Development

Cornel Wilde acquired the rights to John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners for $30,000 in 1958. Gregory Peck had his own production company, Melville Productions, in partnership with Sy Bartlett, which had made The Big Country and Pork Chop Hill and they later purchased the rights. They planned to make it after The Guns of Navarone. Peck was impressed by J. Lee Thompson's work on that film and hired him for Cape Fear. Peck said his goal was to make "first class professional entertainment intelligently done."

Casting

Telly Savalas was screen tested for the role, but later played private eye Charlie Sievers. Robert Mitchum refused to play Max Cady when he was first offered the part, but eventually accepted it after Peck and Thompson delivered him flowers and a case of bourbon.

Thompson wanted Hayley Mills, whom he had cast in Tiger Bay, to play the daughter, but Mills was unavailable.

Polly Bergen signed in December 1960. It was her first film in eight years.

Filming

Principal photography of Cape Fear began on April 6 and ended in June 1961. Thompson envisioned the film in black and white, believing that shooting the film in color would lessen the atmosphere. As an Alfred Hitchcock fan, he wanted to have Hitchcockian elements in the film, such as unusual lighting angles, an eerie musical score, closeups, and subtle hints rather than graphic depictions of the violence Cady has in mind for the family. Hitchcock collaborators Robert F. Boyle and George Tomasini served as production designer and editor, and his regular composer Bernard Herrmann wrote the score.

The outdoor scenes were filmed on location in Savannah, Georgia; Stockton, California; and the Universal Studios backlot at Universal City, California. The indoor scenes were done at Universal Studios Soundstage. Mitchum had a real-life aversion to Savannah, where as a teenager, he had been charged with vagrancy and put on a chain gang. This resulted in a number of the outdoor scenes being shot at Ladd's Marina in Stockton, including the culminating conflict on the houseboat at the end of the movie.

The scene in which Mitchum attacks Polly Bergen's character on the houseboat was almost completely improvised. Before the scene was filmed, Thompson suddenly told a crew member: "Bring me a dish of eggs!" Mitchum's rubbing the eggs on Bergen was not scripted and Bergen's reactions were real. She also suffered back injuries from being knocked around so much. She felt the impact of the "attack" for days. While filming the scene, Mitchum cut open his hand, leading Bergen to recall: "his hand was covered in blood, my back was covered in blood. We just kept going, caught up in the scene. They came over and physically stopped us."

In the source novel The Executioners, by John D. MacDonald, Cady was a soldier court-martialed and convicted on then Lieutenant Bowden's testimony for the brutal rape of a 14-year-old girl. The censors stepped in, banned the use of the word "rape", and stated that depicting Cady as a soldier reflected adversely on U.S. military personnel.

Music

Bernard Herrmann, as often in his scores, uses a reduced version of the symphony orchestra. Here, other than a 46-piece string section (slightly larger than usual for film scores), he adds four flutes (doubling on two piccolos, two alto flutes in G, and two bass flutes in C) and eight French horns. No use is made of further wind instruments or percussion.

In his 2002 book A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, Stephen C. Smith writes:

"Yet Herrmann was perfect for Cape Fear ... Herrmann's score reinforces Cape Fear's savagery. Mainly a synthesis of past devices, its power comes from their imaginative application and another ingenious orchestration ... a rehearsal for his similar orchestration on Hitchcock's Torn Curtain in 1966. Like similar 'psychological' Herrmann scores, dissonant string combinations suggest the workings of a killer's mind (most startlingly in a queasy device for cello and bass viols as Cadey prepares to attack the prostitute). Hermann's prelude searingly establishes the dramatic conflict: descending and ascending chromatic voices move slowly towards each other from their opposite registers, finally crossing–just as Boden and Cadey's [sic] game of cat-and-mouse will end in deadly confrontation."

Release

Censorship

Although the word "rape" was entirely removed from the script before shooting, the film still enraged the censors, who worried that "there was a continuous threat of sexual assault on a child." To accept the film, British censors required extensive editing and deleting of specific scenes.

After making around 6 minutes of cuts, the film still nearly garnered a British X rating (meaning at the time, "Suitable for those aged 18 and older", not necessarily meaning there was sexually explicit or violent content). Thompson said he had to make 161 cuts; the censor argued it was fifteen main cuts but admitted they took 5 minutes. The censor said this was primarily because the film involved threat of sexual assault against a child.

Critical response

Upon its release, the film received positive but cautious feedback from critics due to the film's content. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 25 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "An exemplary thriller powered by Robert Mitchum's chilling performance and Bernard Herrmann's sinister score, Cape Fear seethes with perfectly modulated tension."

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised the "tough, tight script", as well as the film's "steady and starkly sinister style." He went on to conclude his review by saying, "this is really one of those shockers that provokes disgust and regret." The entertainment-trade magazine Variety reviewed the film as "competent and visually polished", while commenting on Mitchum's performance as a "menacing omnipresence."

Home media

Cape Fear was first made available on VHS on March 1, 1992. On May 14, 1992, it was released on laserdisc. It was later re-released on VHS, as well as DVD, on September 18, 2001. The film was released onto Blu-ray on January 8, 2013. It contains production photos and a "making-of" featurette.

Remake

A remake of the same name was released in 1991, attributing both MacDonald's novel and Webb's 1962 screenplay as source material. Directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Wesley Strick, the film stars Nick Nolte as Bowden, Robert De Niro as Cady, Jessica Lange as Bowden's wife (renamed 'Leigh') and Juliette Lewis as his daughter (renamed 'Danielle').

Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Martin Balsam all make cameo appearances, and Bernard Herrmann's original score was adapted and re-orchestrated by Elmer Bernstein.

The film makes several notable changes to the story, namely by changing Sam Bowden to Cady's former defense attorney, who secretly and deliberately sabotaged his client's case to ensure a conviction. Cady dies during the film's climax, after the houseboat sinks. The remake also combines Charlie Sievers and Deputy Kersek into a single character - Claude Kersek (played by Joe Don Baker).

Legacy

Although it makes no acknowledgement of Cape Fear, the episode "The Force of Evil" from the 1977 NBC television series Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected uses virtually the same plot, merely introducing an additional supernatural element to the released prisoner.

The film and its remake serve as the basis for the 1993 The Simpsons episode "Cape Feare" in which Sideshow Bob, recently released from prison, stalks the Simpson family in an attempt to kill Bart. The episode, and both films, serve as inspiration for Anne Washburn's play Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play.

In April 2007, Newsweek selected Cady as one of the 10 best villains in cinema history. Specifically, the scene where Cady attacks Sam's family was ranked number 36 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments in 2004.

A consumer poll on the Internet Movie Database rates Cape Fear as the 65th-best trial film, although the trial scenes are merely incidental to the plot.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #61
• 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
  • Max Cady – #28 Villain

See also

• List of films featuring home invasions
• List of films featuring surveillance
• Trial movies

Further reading

• Bergman, Paul; Asimow, Michael. (2006) Reel justice: the courtroom goes to the movies (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel). ISBN 0-7407-5460-2; ISBN 978-0-7407-5460-9; ISBN 0-8362-1035-2; ISBN 978-0-8362-1035-4.
• Machura, Stefan and Robson, Peter, eds. Law and Film: Representing Law in Movies (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 2001). Thain, Gerald J., "Cape Fear, Two Versions and Two Visions Separated by Thirty Years." ISBN 0-631-22816-0, ISBN 978-0-631-22816-5. 176 pages.

External links

• Cape Fear at IMDb
• Cape Fear at the TCM Movie Database
• Cape Fear at AllMovie
• Cape Fear at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Cape Fear at Rotten Tomatoes