Cape Fear [Blu-ray] [1991]

This blu-ray presents the film in 2.35:1 cinemascope with a great lossless DTS 5.1 sound upgrade and it looks terrific. The added detail has an effect of adding beauty (the opening water ripples of Saul Bass and co's credits) or atmospheric detail (everywhere else!). The HD format has been a big benefit for the presentation.

Extras are a whole 'nother story:

There's a SD 1991 "behind the scenes" (ie. EPK video) which adds not much, except that Martin Scorcese rather disappointingly refers to the original as a "perfect B picture" and Wesley Strick turns out to be a mallflower teenager with a goatee - yikes!

There's also a SD compilation of Saul Bass credit sequences, including Vertigo, which are pretty nifty but completely superfluous unfortunately.

I love this film, for the record, but I think I prefer the original. This one aspires more to realism in characterisation, while the original used archetypes to tell more of a fairytale/fable kind of approach. However, this one adds some religious connotations, some of which works and some of which doesn't. I never really get a good feel of why Max Cady would want to (sort of spoilers) try Sam in a Book of Job fashion. I get that he got all up his own bottom in prison trying to make himself better than the rest of the prisoners and fixated on a higher kind of revenge, but it never really coelesces with his other actions, which remain those of a petty crook with an inflated image. You could argue that inflated image is what's given to delusions of grandeur, but the film seems to play up to the idea that Cady's trial has some grander, perhaps even spiritual value.
The real reason all this stuff is here? To make the film seem, sigh, "deeper" than it really is. Scorsese mentions some of this stuff in the "Making of"/Behind the Scenes fluff, but he seems to have little to no idea most of the subtext in his film was there in the first place in the first movie.

Very confusing stuff! The film, however, is still a Hell of a good watch. I suggest you do what I did, buy both Cape Fears on Blu-Ray and get The Simpsons Season 5 out of your cupboard (or buy it if you don't have it) and watch both Cape Fears, followed by "Cape Feare", the excellent Simpsons parody. Now THAT'S an evening of entertainment.

Scorsese cut and pasted the score from J. Lee Thompson's 1962 original as well as offering small roles to Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck (who played the original Max Cady and Sam Bowden respectively), but this brash re-imagination is largely its own beast. And beast is the word: a snarling and visceral creature. It is also an exercise in sustained psychological horror, as Robert De Niro's fearsomely muscular, tattooed rapist is set free with a score to settle with his own defence lawyer (Nick Nolte).

Some have cited Scorsese's dizzying camera movements and Thelma Schoonmaker's zippy editing as crassly manipulative. But that's the point, for "manipulative" is the adjective that describes Cady best. He's a self-destructive psychotic for sure, but he intends to teach family man/adulterer Bowden a lesson about living by a principle before he goes down for good.

Scorsese's ability to wring breathless performances from his cast has rarely served him with such stark success: here we have career-best work from Nolte as well as Juliette Lewis as Bowden's teenage daughter. To coin a cringe-worthy phrase, she's a blossoming flower - the scene in which Cady lures the brace-wearing Danielle onto an eerie school theatre stage, decked out with a Hansel & Gretel set (no one claims the symbolism is subtle!), is a childhood rite of passage as seen in a nightmare; it's also very skilfully paced and played.

For all the fizz and suspense and manoeuvring, the climax, which takes place in the stormy waters off the titular cape, is somewhat disappointing. Where Lee Thompson's movie ended with a nail-biting game of cat-and-mouse in the shadowy reeds, Wesley Strick's screenplay resorts to genre convention, stripping Cady down to a babbling monster. But what an exhilarating ride it is getting there, full of memorable set-pieces interspersed with striking dreamy images.

This for me is of my favourite scary films, Robert De Niro is fantastic in it, I can highly recommend this as a great scary movie.