Cape Fear Box Set [1961 and 1991] [DVD]

Simple question: who is the better director, Martin Scorsese or J. Lee Thompson? The answer might seem glaringly obvious, but Scorsese's often outright embarrassingly overwrought remake of Cape Fear showed that when it came to genre pictures, Scorsese wasn't even a runner up.

J. Lee Thompson's 1962 version of Cape Fear may not be a masterpiece, but in every way it's a superior thriller to Martin Scorsese's horribly misjudged remake. More surprisingly, it's also much nastier even with the heavier censorship of the day - Robert Mitchum's treatment of Polly Bergen in the last reel is startlingly violent and disturbing even now and its still shocking to see an early 60s film that revolves around sex crimes. There's no doubt exactly what's on Mitchum's mind, whether he's eyeing up a pickup in a bar or breaking an egg in his fist and smearing the yolk over the mother's shoulders and neck: like a lazy reptile waiting to casually catch a fly with his tongue, he merely has to look at Gregory Peck's underage daughter to exude menace. Where the remake offered a dysfunctional family forced to come together, the original offers something much more anarchic, as Gregory Peck's Mr Civil Liberties gradually comes to realize that the only way to protect his All-American family from Mitchum's strutting lizard-like vengeful ex-con is play dirty himself and plan his murder using his own daughter as bait. He may be playing another small-town southern lawyer, but he's is as far way from Atticus Finch as Mitchum's seedy, cocky but thoroughly self-aware Max Cady is from his self-deluding self-righteous `preacher' Harry Powell.

While Mitchum and Peck occupy centre-stage, James Webb's tight script ensures the supporting cast make a strong impression too as they usher Peck further down the path to murder: Martin Balsam's sympathetic police chief who'll bend the law a little to harass an ex-con for a solid citizen, Telly Savalas (with hair) as a pragmatic private eye who is not above calling in as little help from the wrong side of tracks and Jack Kruschen, not playing Jewish for a change, as Cady's mouthpiece who knows just how to use the law to protect the guilty. Aided immensely by Samuel Leavitt's menacing black and white photography and Bernard Herrmann's dramatically sinister score, Thompson's direction is right on target throughout: he may not have been one of the great directors, but he knew how to tell a story without losing the characters along the way, and he's at the top of his game here. It may not be quite a classic, but it is a strikingly effective thriller, albeit an undeniably nasty one.

Unusually for a film of the period, this boasts a surprisingly excellent DVD, with a good widescreen black and white transfer and plenty of extras, from a half hour documentary (though sadly only Thompson and Peck contribute, with Mitchum notably absent), production notes, a well-designed stills montage and the original theatrical trailer.

Where Thompson delivered a good pulp thriller that knew how to do its job and did it well, Scorsese delivered an hyperactive exercise in over the top camerawork, crude editing, and, in Robert De Niro's laughably comic cuts loon, horribly overindulged performances. But his performance is just indicative of the constant overkill that Scorsese brings to the picture. Why have the villain merely sodomise a woman as he did in the original when he can bite her cheek off as well? Why have him settle for love and hate on his knuckles when you can cover his body in "Look, I'm a psycho who's read the violent bits in the Bible too many times" tattoos? And why not add pinups of Stalin and the odd mass-murderer in his cell just to underline it that bit more? Why kill only one supporting character when you can kill two and cover the floor with their blood? Why save the florid camerawork for the big dramatic scenes where it will have more impact when you can make every minor shot look like a crashing climax to a grand opera? Why not signpost his intentions for the underage daughter in virtual 40-foot high neon letters by having him try to seduce her in grandma's fairytale cottage on the school stage just in case we don't get all the Big Bad Wolf references?

Wesley Strick's screenplay does a good job of updating the tale of Nick Nolte's lawyer and his dysfunctional family being stalked by the former client he did less than his best to keep out of jail for the Fatal Attraction era, and with another, more commercially savvy director this could have worked well as a genre film (it was originally intended as a Spielberg picture) but Scorsese has no idea how to build suspense or atmosphere as he crashes through the material like a bull elephant on speed in a china shop. Yet even his misguided directorial flourishes pale into insignificance next to De Niro's horribly misjudged performance as the vengeful bogeyman, inspired more by Robert Mitchum's character in Night of the Hunter than the one he played in the original film. Where Mitchum merely had to look at Gregory Peck's underage daughter to exude menace in the original, De Niro throws in an absurd Deep Frahyed Sowvan acsunt and a series of ridiculous mannerisms and outrageous facial gurning that even Robert Newton's Long John Silver at his most inebriated might have thought too much, turning his character into more of a cartoon clown than his Fearless Leader in Rocky and Bullwinkle. While with his subsequent semi-comatose performances there's some novelty value in seeing him go all-out, there's no threat or tension from his indestructible killer, no matter how much the film amps up the violence from the original (which had censorship problems of its own back in 1962).

Jessica Lange seems at times to think she's in a school production of a Tennessee Williams play (you almost expect her to say "Ah hayve always relahed on tha psychosis of strayngahs") and delivers much of her dialogue as if it were a breathing exercise, but Nolte and Juliette Lewis fare better, though it's Joe Don Baker who steals what little there is in the film worth stealing by being one of the few in the cast to rein his performance in. The cameos from original stars Robert Mitchum (cashing the check with consummate disinterested professionalism), Gregory Peck (perhaps making his reluctance to appear known through his over-the-top turn as an outraged old school Gentleman of tha Sowth lawyer) and Martin Balsam (wasted in a nothing part as a judge) only serve to remind you how much better the 1962 version was. Neither thrilling nor bad movie fun, this just gets increasingly tiresome. Still, you have to give them marks for having the chutzpah to tip the audience off that De Niro's character is insane by showing him laughing at Problem Child, and, it has to be said, were it not for this movie we'd probably never have had one of the funniest episodes of The Simpsons ever, Cape Feare - or the excellent DVD extras package for the first film.

Both these films are worth getting, but as a double bill this becomes a great purchase. If anything the original film is the better of the two, but don't under-estimate Scorcese's remake, its a powerful film in its own right, but just a little over the top.

Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum star in the original 1961 version, and Scorcese gave them both small roles in the remake. Nick Nolte and Robert DeNiro star in the remake. DeNiro worked out seriously for this role, and although aged 49 at the time, when you watch the opening scene (the last to be filmed) you can see he was in tremendous shape. He was working out for hours every day before filming. The main difference between the two films is that in the original version the Bowden family are basically 'good' and Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is 'evil'. In the remake this is much less clear cut, and the family have problems. Cady is also given some legal basis for being unhappy with Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) in the remake, although this is no justification for his actions of course.

Its worth mentioning Bernard Herrmanns teriffic score which was adapted for the remake as well. If Hitchcock had had the chance he would have used this, its very sinister, with a memorable hook.

There is a bonus disc with the 1991 version. This contains a documentary, deleted scenes etc etc. The original version also has a similar number of extras as well.

I bought this boxset because De Niro is one of my favourite actors ever so I wanted to see how did he cope with doing Max Cady's character... and to be fair he couldn't have done it better.

Brilliant thriller and a great performance by De Niro.