Compare/Contrast takes a look at the similarities, differences, and overall cinematic experiences of films that were remade or adapted from other films.

How much can a seemingly normal human being take before it’s too much? How far can he or she be pushed before the person pushes back? And if he or she pushes back, what are the consequences? These themes are explored in varying detail in the two versions of Cape Fear—the first film from 1962, directed by J. Lee Thompson and staring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum; the remake from 1991, directed by Martin Scorsese and staring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. Adapted (loosely) from John D. MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, both films tell the story of lawyer Sam Bowden (Peck in ’62, Nolte in ’91). Bowden’s entire life begins to unravel when ex-con Max Cady (Mitchum ’62, De Niro ’91) begins stalking and terrorizing the entire Bowden family. Cady is so crafty and careful with his crimes, however, that he’s virtually untouchable by the law, to the point that Bowden has to resort to criminal means in a desperate attempt to save his family. Both Cape Fears are alike in their plotting and overall character usage, but they’re entirely different beasts. While the ’62 Cape Fear is pretty subversive for its time period, filmmaking wise, the ’91 adaptation is, at times, an over-the-top nightmare of brutality, which makes it all the more ironic that it’s one of the most “mainstream” films of Scorsese’s career.

I. CAPE FEAR 1962

“You’re just an animal: coarse, lustful, barbaric.”

With the original film, director J. Lee Thompson leaned heavily on inspirations from Alfred Hitchcock. Much like Hitchcock had done with Psycho in 1960, Thompson planned Cape Fear as a black and white film in an era of color movies. Cape Fear is rooted in film noir conventions, heavy on shadow and tough men in wide-brimmed hats. As the villainous Max Cady, Robert Mitchum is a bundle of sleazy charm and menace, puffing his chest out and talking with a lazy Southern drawl in between chomps on a cigar. When we first meet Cady, he’s walking down a city street and stops as he ascends court house steps in order to ogle a pretty young lady walking by him. This is immediately followed by him passing a much older woman carrying a heavy stack of books. She drops one of her books, and Cady doesn’t take even the slightest pause to help her—he keeps climbing those steps, and right away we know exactly what kind of character Max Cady is; if that woman carrying the books had been younger, and prettier, he would’ve stopped instantly and turned on his snake-oil salesman charm. Cady is in a courthouse to see Sam Bowden, played by Gregory Peck. Peck made a career out of playing just, stoic men, and his character in Cape Fear is no exception. His Sam Bowden is so composed and polite that when Cady starts terrorizing him, Bowden at first seems more flustered than outright worried. Peck was unquestionably a great actor, but the way he plays Bowden is just a tad wooden. Part of this is intentional, since as the story progresses Bowden becomes more and more desperate, so that his calm veneer begins to crack; but even so, Peck’s take on the role leaves a little to be desired. It makes for a slightly one-sided movie, because as dull as Peck is, Mitchum is consistently entertaining. Even at his most vile, Max Cady is fascinating. He has an almost machine-like drive for ruining Peck’s life.



Cady is gunning for Bowden because eight years ago Cady was “attacking” a woman when Bowden happened to be walking by. Bowden broke up the attack and testified against Cady, thus landing Cady in jail. There is an overall theme of sexual assault blanketing Cape Fear, but to keep the film from the wrath of ratings boards, the filmmakers go to great lengths to never use the word “rape.” Despite this sugarcoating, it’s painfully obvious what Cady’s intentions and crimes are. The plot point of Bowden just happening to stumble upon Cady committing his crime rings a little hollow to me; the fact that Bowden happens to be a lawyer seems almost inconsequential to the plot of this film— which is why the 1991 film’s interpretation of the material—that Bowden was in fact Cady’s lawyer, and intentionally withheld evidence to let Cady get convicted—seems a much better way of handling the lawyer angle. With the ’62 film, it’s almost an afterthought that Bowden is a lawyer. Bowden’s calm reserve starts to wane as Cady sets about ruining his seemingly perfect life. Cady starts stalking the Bowden family, he poisons the family dog, and he makes it abundantly clear that he wants to rape Bowden’s wife (Polly Bergen) and his 14-year-old daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Martin was 15 when she made this film, but she appears and acts much younger, which is essential to the film’s uncomfortable feeling. It’s shocking, especially in a Hollywood film from the early ‘60s, to see Cady be so blunt in his advances towards Nancy; at one point he literally says, “She’s getting to be almost as juicy as your wife!” There’s an incredibly thrilling and disturbing sequence where Nancy encounters Cady on the street and flees from him through an empty school building. The tension is ratcheted up as she frantically tries to escape, with the film cutting back again and again to who we, the audience, think is Cady. The shot of the purser is always at waist level—focusing on the man’s crotch; the intention of this is to disguise the fact, eventually revealed, that this is not Cady but instead some harmless janitor. However, the implication is clear, with Nancy’s terror growing and the film frequently cutting to close-ups of a man’s crotch as he follows her. It’s a brilliant scene, heightened—as is every scene in this film—by Bernard Hermann’s eerie, intense, string-based score.



The film is peppered with colorful supporting characters played by dependable character actors. Martin Balsam, who famously got his face slashed before falling down some steps in Psycho, plays a police chief Bowden is friends with. The chief bends the law as far as it will go in an attempt to run Cady out of town, but Cady continues to not outwardly break any laws—and when he does, there’s no proof. There’s a private detective, played by Telly Savalas, that Bowden hires to tail Cady. Savalas has a perfect hardboiled pulp novel feel to his performance, but the film makes very little use of his private detective character; the remake would fare better with its private detective. And there’s a flirty young woman named Diane Taylor, played with a perfect femme fatale quality by Barrie Chase. Cady encounters Diane in a bar, constantly making eyes with her as she drinks with another man. It’s a chilling and seductive scene, mostly wordless, as a jazz band plays on and Diane can’t take her eyes off Cady. Near the end of the scene the police actually arrive to bring Cady in for questioning, and even that isn’t enough to scare Diane off. Cady ends the scene by asking her out for a date right before the police haul him away, and she actually takes him up on the offer. Her motivations become a little more clear when she delivers the following lines, in a dulcet, sultry tone: “Max Cady, what I like about you is you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower.” She doesn’t know how right she is, because later in the movie Cady beats her. The acting and subtle framing of the scene make the beating seem extra intense, though the final result just appears to be some smeared makeup on Diane’s cheek. This is a scenario the remake would take to the uttermost extreme in a disturbingly graphic sequence. Things eventually come to a head as Bowden tries to use his family as bait to draw Cady out and kill him once and for all. But Cady, who seems to possess almost preternatural knowledge, is onto Bowden’s ruse. The climax is set on the titular Cape Fear river, aboard the Bowden’s house boat. Through most of the film, Polly Bergen, as Bowden’s wife Peggy, makes very little impression; she’s mostly just there to wring her hands and ask Bowden what’s going on. However, the finale gives her an intense moment of acting as she and Cady come face to face on the boat. Cady is more animal than man at this point, having already murdered a police deputy Bowden had brought with him. He’s shirtless and a mess, and he physically and virtually assaults Peggy to the point that she’s willing to agree to let him have her if he’ll leave her daughter alone. Again, for a film from this time period, this scene is impressive in how disturbing it is, and how much the film is able to get away with. Cady eventually comes painfully close to finally having the young Nancy all to himself, but Bowden arrives in the nick of time. And here the film cops out. The film has gone to great pains to show how far a good man like Bowden can be pushed before he snaps. In the novel that inspired the film, The Executioners, Bowden, with no resort left, finally kills Cady. Cape Fear doesn’t let that happen. Instead, Bowden says he’d rather Cady spend the rest of his life in jail. This is of course a much more noble ending, and in the “real” world I would in no way, shape, or form condone murder. But in the universe the film inhabits, Bowden finally killing Cady just makes sense. Besides, Cady is so crafty with the law that who’s to say he won’t find some incredible way to wiggle out of all this and come after Bowden again and again? Perhaps Bowden not killing Cady is a more commendable ending, but it also just feels like the film pulled back at the very last second.

II. CAPE FEAR 1991

“…the only thing to fear on those enchanted summer nights was that the magic would end and real life would come crashing in.”

Whereas the 1962 Cape Fear relied heavily on things happening in the noirish shadows, and on restraint, Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake takes the opposite approach, relying on bombast and an almost relentless intensity that magnifies itself with graphic violence and occasionally over-the-top performances. Scorsese has made a career of films about violent men, and violence is nothing new to him, yet the violence in his adaptation of Cape Fear somehow feels more disturbing and more explicit than usual. And despite this, it also feels like one of his most mainstream films. Scorsese and screenwriter Wesley Strick work hard to elevate the pulpy trappings of the plot, but in the end the film still has all the foundations of your standard ‘90s Hollywood thriller. Steven Spielberg was originally going to make the film, but found the material too violent. Scorsese at the time was actually attached to Schindler’s List, but Scorsese felt a Jewish director should handle the material, so he and Spielberg swapped projects. While Cape Fear undoubtedly feels like a Scorsese movie, it oddly feels like a Spielberg one as well. The style of framing and use of closeups is reminiscent of Spielberg’s shooting style, as is the overall look of the film. The bare bones of the story are synonymous with the ’62 film, but there are also key changes that enhance the characters and their motivations. For one thing, in this film Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is now the former lawyer of Max Cady (Robert De Niro). Instead of merely stumbling upon Cady committing a crime as in the original film, Bowden ends up pulling a move that would get most lawyers disbarred: he deliberately throws the case so Cady will be found guilty. He buries evidence; it seems the girl Cady raped and beat was known as “promiscuous,” and Bowden knew full and well that lawyers can easily manipulate this and disgustingly make it seem as if the victim “had it coming.” In jail, Cady becomes a tattooed monstrosity. He teaches himself to read, and studies up on the law, and knows that Bowden buried evidence. Once out of jail, Cady is out for revenge, and he cuts a much more destructive path than Mitchum did in the original.



De Niro’s performance is magnificent. It would be easy to call it over-the-top, and it is at times, but it all fits perfectly with his interpretation of Max Cady. Speaking with a thick, ignorant-sounding hillbilly drawl, De Niro is muscled and crass, braying obnoxious laughter at a movie theater while puffing up mushroom cloud-like cigar smoke. By the end of the film, he’s mutated into something akin to a slasher movie monster—his face burned and scarred as he violently tries to kill everyone. As Bowden, Nolte gets a little more meat to work with than Gregory Peck did. Whereas Peck’s Bowden was an almost flawless man, Nolte’s Bowden seems to have nothing but flaws. The marriage between the Bowdens in the original film was idyllic; here, Bowden’s marriage to his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) seems always in turmoil. Bowden had an affair a while ago, and while the couple seems to have worked to improve their marriage, it doesn’t stop him from openly flirting with a woman who works for him named Lori (Illeana Douglas). As the Bowdens’ daughter Danielle, Juilette Lewis is able to develop a real, fleshed-out character, rather than just the intended victim that Lori Martin was in the original. Lewis was 18 when the film was made, and though she physically looks older (and certainly older than Martin in the original), her acting conveys a childlike naiveté that works wonders for the character. She gets along with her parents, but, in true teenager fashion, cannot seem to begin to fathom them as people. This leads to one of the remake’s most compelling scenes: whereas the original film had the daughter character being chased by Cady, the remake features a seduction. Cady is pretending to be a teacher of Danielle’s, wooing her with talk that while her parents may not understand her, he does. And though she buys his ruse at first, it’s not long before she catches on that this man in front of her is actually the person who has been terrorizing her family. But rather than flee, she stays, fascinated and oddly drawn to him. Cady touches her cheek seductively, and she hesitantly sucks on his thumb, and then they kiss. It’s a creepy and strangely sexy scene, and it perfectly illustrates how far Scorsese is willing to go with the complexities of the characters.





While the ’91 film doesn’t have a Diane Taylor character slumming it with Cady, it lets Ileana Douglas’ character Lori fill that role for a scene that fully reveals how monstrous Cady can be. Cady, knowing exactly who Lori is, seduces her in a bar. Bowden has stood her up for a drink, and she decides to go home with Cady—having no idea who he really is—as a way of getting back at Bowden. Back at her house, Cady handcuffs Lori, which at first she drunkly takes for kinky foreplay. But it descends into utter chaotic madness as Cady breaks her arm and bites off a huge chunk of her cheek before raping her. This scene is terrifying in its brutality. Douglas’ performance is gut-wrenchingly convincing, and the gory makeup effects mixed with Elmer Bernstein’s carried-over-from-the-original score wraps the entire sequence up in a chilling little package. The result of this attack is similar to the first film. In the original, the Diane character left town, unwilling to testify against Cady. Here, Lori decides to keep quiet about who attacked her, because she also knows how lawyers can turn rape victims into women “asking for it” on the stand — just another example of Bowden’s evidence tampering coming back to haunt him. Desperate, Bowden turns to a private detective. While Telly Savalas, as the detective in the original film, had a nice swagger to his character, he had no meat to sink his teeth into. The ’91 film, however, beefs up its private detective considerably. Joe Don Baker plays private investigator Claude Kersek as a slob of a man; when we first meet him, he’s guzzling Pepto Bismal at his desk. Despite his sloppy nature, however, Kersek seems to know what he’s doing. He suggests Bowden hire some thugs to beat up Cady to run him out of town. Again, the remake magnifies what the original film did. In the ’62 film, thugs are also hired to beat up Cady, but the scene is mostly soundless and not very convincing. The remake takes it further; the scene with Cady and the hired goons is full of painful bone-breaks and beatings that might kill someone, if this weren’t a movie. In keeping with the complex nature Scorsese is trying to bring to his characters, he actually has Bowden come along to the beating, pitifully cowering behind a dumpster as Cady gets the upper hand and defeats all his attackers. Kersek then suggests trying to fool Cady by using the family as bait and making it look like Bowden has gone out of town. The plan is that if Cady thinks the Bowden women are alone, he’ll break in, and then Bowden can legally murder him as a trespasser. Just as in the original, however, Cady is always one step ahead of the game, and Scorsese throws in a nice little Hitchcock-by-way-of-Brian De Palma touch as Cady actually dresses in full drag, posing as the family maid, before strangling Kersek to death with piano wire.



Just as in the original, the climactic events happen aboard a houseboat on the Cape Fear river. The film descends into chaos as Cady just keeps coming after the family, again and again, as if he were Jason Voorhees or Freddy Kruger. His head gets set on fire, and even that doesn’t stop him! The remake does not pull back at the last minute. Bowden handcuffs one of Cady’s ankles to a piece of sinking ship and watches as Cady slowly drowns to death. As he dies, De Niro throws in one last flourish as he has Cady begin babbling in tongues as if he were a man coming face to face with God. The performances are what elevate everything in the ’91 film. De Niro and Nolte do great work; De Niro is endlessly threatening and Nolte is suitably unhinged as De Niro ruins his life. Jessica Lange, as Bowden’s wife, is strong and commanding in her performance, and Juliette Lewis turns in probably the best performance of her career, seeming to lose whatever acting gift she had in this movie with every other performance she took on. There are even a few nice cameos from the original film: Gregory Peck pops up as Cady’s shyster lawyer, Robert Mitchum plays the police chief role that Martin Balsam played in the original, and Balsam himself plays a judge. All in all, it’s a remake done right: adapting the material while also adding something new to it. Too many modern remakes seem to think if you just recreate a bunch of scenes from the original without doing anything unique it’ll be good enough; this film doesn’t make that mistake. It has a reason to exist. Back to back, the Cape Fear films are a unique reflection of their eras. Even with its subversive nature, the original film was still a product of its time. The ’91 film, in comparison, is a hell-child of the cocaine-binged 1980s, fully embracing its excess and wearing its grandiose nature on its sleeve. They are films that are both remarkably similar and yet strikingly different, and both are excellent in what they are trying to do. That is the sign of a story told right, and we could use a few more of those these days.

