Cape Fear
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Movie Reviews of Cape Fear
Movie Review: a study in remakes
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: If It Ain't Broken, Don't Fix It
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first saw J. Lee Thompson's film I was on the edge of my seat. It is a scary thriller without showing buckets of blood, graphic violence, monster make-up, or even using the word "rape".
A bitter, amoral, psychopathic ex-con, Max Cady (the incomparable Robert Mitchum), recently released from an eight-year prison term, is out for revenge against the man who testified against him at his trial, lawyer Sam Bowden (the late, great, Gregory Peck). He infiltrates into Sam's life, stalking his lovely wife, Peggy (Polly Bergen, no shrinking violet), and his pretty, innocent teenage daughter, Nancy (the appropriately sweet Lori Martin). Sam does everything legally possible (for the time, before anti-stalking laws came into place) to protect his family, but he finds he is powerless under the law, and Cady is very intelligent in his planning. It all ends in a showdown on the river Cape Fear.
Let me just say that this movie has an advantage over the 1991 remake. Cady doesn't have to be covered in tattoos or act like Freddy Krueger to be terrifying. The word "rape" doesn't have to be mentioned nor does the offense have to be shown to us graphically (since the censors of the time forbade it) for the viewer to understand and comprehend what is going on. The performances are all right on, and even when Barrie Chase's Diane Taylor is assaulted, we don't have to be told that she was raped, because it's implied and it's written all over her bruised, traumatized face. Her portrayal of this victimized and frightened young woman is impeccable - why didn't she have a longer career?
Gregory Peck is compelling, and the scenes where Nancy is pursued by Cady outside her school and she escapes inside, only to fear that he has also followed her in (and she is mistaken) is absolutely nail-biting, as is the final showdown. Cady's devious plan to accost Peggy on the boat in order to "trade" her for Nancy is gut-wrenching and extremely watchable. We now have a names for guys like that - rapist, stalker, pedophile, murderer - but the first three were either not used or hadn't been made a term yet. A classic, don't accept any substitutions. As I usually give so much away in my comments, I'll leave the plot details at that. Bernard Hermann's score for the film is perfect, and ranks right along with his score for Alfred Hitchcock's "PSYCHO" - a masterpiece. And so is the movie. Don't watch it alone or in a dark room!!!!!!!! 10/10.
Movie Review: Cape Mitchum
Summary: 5 Stars
Sure there are some shortcomings in this powerful drama when compared to its more recent successor. I first saw this as a pubescent, about the age of the preyed-upon girl in the movie. My family were camping in a tent, a hundred miles from home in isolated Wilson's Promontory, the most southern tip of Australia's mainland. Despite driving rain, a family friend had heard that this flick was showing in a tiny rural town an hour or so around the coast. We enter this hall and take a hardbacked chair amidst rows of odd-looking country types, who's commentary throughout and rolling of sweets down the floorboards were unprecedented behaviour for our friend, my older brother and me. The rain on the tin roof, compounded our terror. And when we made the dark,wet road journey back to the Tidal River camp, I fully expected Mitchum to come clawing across the roof and his inverted image to appear pressed to the windscreen. The fight choregraphy is weak compared to contempory graphics, especially Peck's implausible fisticuffs. He just isn't up to mounting convincing anger and rage;too even and rational a guy and better equipped as an Atticus type as per,'To Kill a Mockingbird'. And about birds, I wonder at the inclusion of the Australian kookaburra laugh(as also featuring in Weismuller's Tarzan flicks of the 50s)for an evocation of the'alien'. The strings are good in places, but for my tastes, retard the timelessness of the film's other features. Where Hermann gives the score that,'Psycho' rush as he did with Hitchcock, he's exemplary. The rest of the cast are fabulous. Savalas gives a telling perfrmance, and the raped woman is beautifully understated. Towering above everyone is Mithcum as Cady and the framing and lighting in black and white of him in particular, and everyone else in general has never been surpassed. It renders DeNiro's package, as suspenseful as it is, a bit of a backwater alongside Mitchum's archetypal terror. Puffing himself up as a bullfrog during a strip search, his searing insouciance before all opposition, male and female, and finally, the predatory resemblance to an alligator as he slips into the river, he seems especially at ease in the aqueous environment where we are least expert. He knows the law as well as those that are paid to enforce it and brutally intuits the workings of his prey's minds. Great script. Nothing wasted. A tour deforce!Movie Review: The Original......Classic Thrills and Chills
Summary: 5 Stars
This review refers to the "Cape Fear"(1962) Widescreen DVD edition by Universal....."Cape Fear" from 1962 is a terrific example of great film noir. Filmed in black and white, director J.Lee Thompson uses shadows and light, and the art of suggestion(the censors were pretty tough back in the 60's), to bring us this bone-chilling and suspenseful classic that over fourty years later, still, has not lost it's draw. Not unlike many of Hitchcock's films, Thompson has the audience on the edge of their seats,our hearts in our throats, and in fear for the hero.
It's good vs. evil, as Greogory Peck and Robert Mitchum, put their immense talents together for this spine tingler. Max Cady(Mitchum) has just been released from 8 long years in prison. From the moment we meet him, we KNOW this is one bad hombre. He is bent on revenge, and Sam Bowden(Peck) is the man who must pay. Sam's young daughter and beautiful wife are the targets of Max's obssession. He is slick and devious and will stop at nothing to get even. Sam does everything in his power legally to try and stop him, but must take matters into his own hands to protect his family.
Mitchum is simply powerful in his performance of this menacing threat, and Peck as always is perfect in his portrayal of the family man whose life has just turned into one big nightmare!
The film is also helped by the wonderful talents of Telly Savalas and Martin Balsam. Polly Bergen and Lori Martin are magnificent as the terrified wife and daughter.The talent doesn't end there though, the haunting music was scored by Bernard Hermann(who worked with Hitch on several films), and Sam Leavitt does a fabulous job with the black and white cinematography.
The transfer to DVD is crisp and sharp. It is presented in anamorphic widescreen(1.85:1)and barely shows it's age. The sound is in Dolby Dig 2.0 Mono. The dialouge as well as the music and background noises are all clear and distguishable.
There is a terrific featurette on the making of the film,production photos, a trailer, and DVD ROM. It may only be viewed in English, but has captions in English and subtitles in Spanish and French for those that may need them.
A thriller that stands the test of time. One that esteemed Director Martin Scorsese chose to pay homage to with a wonderful remake.
Get the popcorn ready and enjoy......Laurie
Movie Review: The limits of the law
Summary: 5 Stars
J. Lee Thompson's 1962 thriller about an ex-convict (Robert Mitchum) stalking the family of the lawyer (Gregory Peck) who put him in jail for rape remains one of the most suspenseful films ever made, even after the over-the-top 1992 Martin Scorsese remake (and the subsequent hilarious SIMPSONS parody of that remake) have eclipsed the original in familiarity. It's very apparent that this film could not have been made prior to the release of PSYCHO just recently before, and as Thompson admits in the helpful "Making of..." feature that accompanies this DVD he was an enormous devotee of Hitchcock's style. The film was groundbreaking for the time in a way that will still cause viewers some surprise: it dealt with rape and stalking very frankly, and dared to suggest that a teenage girl (Peck's daughter Nancy, played by Lori Martin) could be the object of Mitchum's psychotic rape fantasies. There are sequences in this film involving Martin's panicked flight through a deserted school and Mitchum menacing Peck's wife, Polly Bergen, in a houseboat's kitchen, that may be as fine as anything Hitchcock ever did. What makes the film even more unusual is that it seems to be not simply a thriller but an interrogation into the rights of both the accused and of victims under the US legal system in 1962; it seems to foreshadow the debates caused by the Gideon and the Miranda Supreme Court decisions later in the decade. Robert Mitchum, as the ex-convict Max Cady, gives one of the most indelibly portraits of evil ever in American film: a pick-up he later brutalizes (sensitively played by Barrie Chase) describes him as "an animal--coarse, lustful, barbaric," and part of Thompson's genius was to contrast cady's animal appetites with Peck's button-down civilized family life. (Mitchum is shirtless for a good portion of his scenes, and is in amazing physical shape.) The rest of the cast is terrific with the possible exception of poor Peck, whose production company made the film and who seems physically miscast against everyone else in the film: at six foot three, he towers so uncomfortably over both Bergen and Martin that he seems a visitor from another planet. The famous score, heavy on the whooping horns, is by Bernard Herrmann, which only makes the comparisons to Hitchcock seem more inevitable.