Day 59: You Put The Law In My Hands...And I'm Gonna Break Your Heart With It!

CAPE FEAR (1962)
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Gegory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas, Barrie Chase

Eight years after being convicted of assault, Max Cady (Mitchum) saunters into Savannah, Georgia and confronts the man who testified against him: attorney Sam Bowden (Peck).  Cady makes no threats, but he certainly wants to make sure Bowden knows he's out.  Thinking little of it, Bowden goes home to his wife Peggy (Bergen) and 14-year old daughter Nancy (Martin).  Their happy little suburban life continues, but Sam starts noticing Cady turning up everywhere he and his family goes.  Sam goes to the police chief (Balsam), who...well, can't do much, seeing as how Cady hasn't done anything worthy of being arrested.  Sure, he (allegedly) poisons their dog, follows them around town and leers lustfully at Bowden's wife and daughter, but I guess there's was no law against that in the early 60's.  These days, you'd get 5 years for that sort of thing. 

Bowdens paranoia grows, and he hires a private detective named Kojak Charlie Sievers (Savalas), who tails Cady.  When they find one of his mistresses roughed up in a hotel room, they finally have something to bring him in on, but the young lady (Chase) refuses to testify.  Bowden finally confronts Cady in a bar and offers to pay him anything he wants.  All Cady wants is to make Bowden suffer by taking that which is most precious to him.  Bowden finally cracks and hires a gang of hoodlums to rough Cady up, but to no avail. 

Thus begins the most convoluted self-defense plot in history, which concludes with Peggy and Nancy on a houseboat and, while Cady thinks Bowden is in Atlanta, Bowden actually goes to Cape Fear (a real place, dontcha know) to be with his wife and daughter while Sievers meets them there with the hope that Cady is following him so Cady can set foot on their property and, thus, Bowden will be within his legal right to shoot him.  What could go wrong?

Cape Fear has a definite Hitchcockian feel to it.  It was released about two years after Psycho and scenes of the film were actually shot in "Mother's House" on the Universal backlot.  Director J. Lee Thompson had worked with Hitchcock on an earlier film back in England, and several members of the crew (Art Director Robert Boyle and editor George Tomasini) had worked with Hitch on North by Northwest.  Even the music was done by Hitchcock mainstay Bernard Hermann.  So basically what we have is a director emulating one of his heroes.  This is usually a problem (remember Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho?), but here, it's an homage done right.  Besides the preposterous ending, everything works.  Heck, even the climax is so chilling that it's pretty easy to forget the fact that Bowden's plan is full of holes. 

This is the second film in which I've seen Robert Mitchum play the villain, and between the Rev. Harry Powell and Max Cady, I'd definitely say that Cady is the stronger of the two.  There's no moral compass on this man, either real or imagined.  His is the worst of the worst - the very kind of person you hope never gets out of jail, and yet is walking the streets right now. 

Also, this is the second film in which I've seen Gregory Peck play a southern lawyer (we all know the other one).  But where Atticus Finch was strong and stoic in the face of evil, Sam Bowers lets his fear and paranoia get the better of him.  He tries to do everything he can within the confines of the "system," but with no success.  Even when he goes outside the law, he fails.  The only way he can deal with Cady is to take him down himself; a task even he doesn't think he's up to.

Now for the most obvious question: "What did you think of Scorsese's 1991 remake?"  Well...I'll have to let you know next time!