Cape Fear

Psychotics come in all different styles. If Reverend Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter (1955) was frightening in an almost cartoonish, larger-than-life way, then Max Cady in Cape Fear, Robert Mitchum’s other iconic villain performance, is even more frightening because he comes across as thoughtful, polite, even normal. Opening with the famous chords of Bernard Herrmann’s chaotic score, J. Lee Thompson’s film, his only American work in this collection, comes at the tail end of the film noir cycle, and it’s clear we’re not in the 1940’s anymore: rough sex (“You’re just an animal…What I like about you is you’re rock bottom”), child sexual exploitation (“She’s gettin’ to be almost as juicy as your wife, ain’t she?”), and even cursing (“jackass,” at least) all made it past the censors. Cady, of course, is an ex-con who tracks down the man who sent him to prison, Georgian attorney Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), and plans to exact revenge on him, his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen), and 14-year-old daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). What begins with the poisoning of the Bowden dog and stalking of Nancy at school culminates in a sexual assault on a houseboat and a deadly pickax attack on a remote riverbank. Remade by Martin Scorsese in 1991 featuring cameos by Mitchum and Peck, Cape Fear represents the evolution of noir into the thriller (and perhaps a precursor of the slasher film), as evident in the increased use of extended, spine-tingling sequences, like when a stranger boards the boat at night and Peggy can only hide below deck awaiting the footsteps.