100 Scariest Movie Moments: #36 Cape Fear

Anyone who’s seen both The Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear would have to suspect the Robert Mitchum is some great incarnation of Evil who took up acting as a career. It’s easy for him to give off a terrifying presence, while at the same time coming across as likable. He’s something of an early Hannibal Lecter in that sense, only smoother, and less intellectual.

The plot of Cape Fear is that a rapist named Max Cady (Mitchum) has just been released from prison. He blames a lawyer named Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), who testified against him for his incarceration. (Yes, he was a witness who just happened to be a lawyer, no I don’t know why the writer did that.) And intends to harass Bowden and eventually rape his young daughter.

This movie is an unintentional period piece due to the legal issues involved. Firstly and most prominently, Cady’s plan revolves around never actually doing anything illegal until near the end of the film, because he never sets foot on Bowden’s property or touches him. However, in the 21^st Century following someone around in public so aggressively would be called “Stalking,” and he would promptly be arrested for it. And secondly, Cady’s plan revolves around Bowden being unwilling to make his daughter sit in the same room as her rapist and testify. Given that rape victims are now legally allowed to give video testimony to avoid exactly this scenario, it would also be ineffective.

However, this doesn’t take away from the dread of the film. It goes into so much detail about the legal intricacies of the time in which it’s set that it feels very real. Cady has worked out every single, possible trumped-up charge the police could use against him, and has preemptively addressed them all.

One thing notable about the film is that it never vilifies Cady’s lawyer. He’s established as a decent person who believes Cady is being harassed by the police as they search for something to charge him with. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a lawyer to start asking questions when his client is arrested, released, searched, and forced to move twice by the police, all in the space of a single week without a single charge being filed. The legal system isn’t broken, Cady is just a monster who’s really good at taking advantage of it.

The thing that makes this movie most frightening to modern viewers is that the word “rape” is never actually uttered. In most modern crime films dealing with a rapist, we’d likely hear the police discussing getting a blood type from his semen and be given the intricate details in all but flow-chart form. However, the Hayes Code was stillin effect when this film was made, meaning that directly referring to rape would have gotten the film banned. So instead, this film makes use of this taboo by making it clear that the characters don’t want to use the word, and the result is terrifying.

The fight sequences at the climax do come off as a bit awkward. My understanding is that this was a result of the filmmakers’ having trouble covering up the fact that Gregory Peck was considerably larger and stronger than Robert Mitchum. They address this somewhat by covering up Peck’s body more than Mitchum’s, which fits with the characters. It works to an extent, but I still get the feeling that if Peck had ever thrown a real punch Mitchum’s head would have gone flying.

Once again though, this is a fairly minor criticism. For most of the film, the primary threat is to Bowden’s daughter. And therefore, even if Bowden was easily able to overpower Cady, he couldn’t have watched her every moment of every day.

This is one of the few black-and-white films that I do find absolutely chilling. Coming out in the early 1960s, it was definitely a time when the Hayes Code was already under heavy fire. People understood that films did not need to be family-friendly affairs, and this was a film that only a moron would have taken a child to see. So don’t show it to your kids, but do watch it.