Not as Good as the Original...And Here's Why

The original "Cape Fear" was considered pretty rough stuff in 1962. Pretty perverted. And yet...at its heart was a very good, "All-American" family who centered the story well. You couldn't get more stalwart and noble than Gregory Peck in 1962(heck, he made To Kill a Mockingbird the same year, won an Oscar for that, and played a lawyer in each film.)

An irony about the original is that while Bowden was a lawyer, that didn't inform his original relationship with Cady at all -- he simply came across Cady "attacking"(um, raping?) a woman in the dark corner of a parking lot and evidently both fought Cady and alerted the police. Bowden could have been in ANY profession -- businessman, teacher, salesman. Bowden was, quite simply , a hero who got "involved." THAT's what made Cady furious -- he got involved.

The remake makes sure to give Cady and Bowden the more direct connection: Bowden represented Cady in a rape-attack trial. Bowden hid exculpatory evidence(the "loose" sexual background of the victim.) This makes the remake more "logical" in the relationship between Bowden and Cady...but almost immediately loses the good guy/bad guy power of the first film.

In many ways, director Scorsese and his writers "worsened" our connection with the Bowden family in the remake. Papa hid that evidence and was cheating on his wife; mama had become a neurotic rage-filled cuckolded wife; the daughter was messed up, screaming a lot, and trying to escape her parents (and all too willing to be seduced by Cady a certain distance.) There was a "bad taste" to the Bowdens in the second Cape Fear, and Scorsese seemed to like that. He said something terrible about the Bowdens in the first one: that they were so normal he rooted for CADY.

I like the Bowdens a lot better in the original. I like Bowden's straightforward heroism a lot better in the original. In fact, I like the original better! The only real competition across the ages is Mitchum versus DeNiro as Cady. Its a great role, they are both great, but: advantage Mitchum. I like his sex-charged good ol' boy cool and creepiness better than DeNiro's rather sexless psycho hillbilly act(funny as it is.) And yet DeNiro, and not Mitchum, got an Oscar nom for Cady.

But perhaps the worst thing about the Cape Fear remake is how the mother and daughter were treated in the remake. With Jessica Lange over-emoting all over the place and Juliette Lewis playing things pretty dumb(particularly in allowing to DeNiro to at least tentatively seduce her), the story turned into this plot: "Flawed but decent husband and father tries to convince wife and daughter that Max Cady is horrible...wife and daughter refuse to take seriously until maid is killed and both women are sexually threatened on houseboat."

And this: I liked Robert Mitchum's interaction with sexy Barrie Chase(his first on-screen victim) early in the movie.

First, he tells her (even as cops are taking him out of the bar for questioning): "I'll give you one hour to get rid of this guy"(thumbs at the man who is talking to her.)

Later, SHE tells him: "I like you because I can't get any lower." Hmmm.

And then he reveals himelf in the bedroom to be a monster.

Compare this to Ileana Douglas flirting with DeNiro in the remake. She lacks Barrie Chase's sex appeal and(directed by then-boyfriend Scorsese) elects to play the scene laughing and laughing like an idiot. DeNiro's fast-tawkin psycho hillbilly "lands her" but they both seem like a couple of dimwits. And then -- worse than Mitchum in the original -- DeNiro in the bedroom with her, elects to bite a piece of cheek out of the woman. (The cannibalistic psychopathy of this addition to the remake always bothered me -- you could use that to PROVE how nuts Cady was, and to his face, too.)

It turns out that the "bite a piece of her face off" bit was given to Scorsese and his screenwriter by none other than Nick Nolte, who had heard of a rapist doing exactly that to a victim.

All this said, the contours of the original Cape Fear -- and the chilling Bernard Herrmann score -- were enough to make the remake quite a hit. DeNiro isn't as sexual as Mitchum but he comes up with his own cornpone talking-in-tongues weirdness as Cady. Nolte is interestingly trim and mild(against type.) Scorsese's no slouch in the cinematics department. Good...but not as good as the original.