CAPE FEAR

CAPE FEAR 

MAX CADY'S ODYSSEY TO TV

by armen pandola

Cape Fear started as a short novel, The Executioners by John McDonald. The idea was simple - a vicious psychopath torments an attorney, Sam Bowden, and his family because the attorney testified as a witness to Max Cady's brutal beating and rape of a 14 y.o. Bowden's testimony convicted Cady.

Hollywood loves a good torment story so in 1962, it made that novel into Cape Fear - yes, it is a much better title. The attorney was played by Gregory Peck who that same year played the iconic attorney/father in To Kill A Mockingbird. Peck's own company produced the movie and he was supposed to play Cady (what a stretch that would have been!) but when Charlton Heston dropped out of playing the attorney role, Peck stepped into playing Bowden and hired Robert Mitchum to play Cady. As you might imagine, in 1962 the movies weren't ready to tell the story of a brutal sexual stalker like Cady so there were lots of revisions to the book's story, but the essential ingredients remained the same: Cady is crazy and will stop at nothing to destroy Sam Bowden and his family.

That Cape Fear movie was a flop, commercially bankrupting Peck's production company. But, it has become a huge success with critics and audiences ever since. Bernard Hermann's operatic score is considered one of his best. Mitchum's performance is riveting. In fact, the entire cast proves the depth of Hollywood's talent in the 1960s with Martin Balsam, Telly Sevalas, Polly Bergen and dancer Barrie Chase all giving excellent performances.

In 1991, Hollywood decided to remake Cape Fear. In the ensuing 30 years or so since the original, quite a few changes had come over Hollywood movies. The major change was in the freedom to show and tell all the horrible things that horrible people do, especially sexual assault. Incredibly, Steven Spielberg was set to direct but realized that this type of movie was not his cup of poison so he passed the blood-soaked baton to Martin Scorsese who felt right at home with extreme violence if not totally with no-holes-barred sex. With Scorsese on board, longtime Scorsese partner-in-crime,Robert DeNiro, became the logical choice to play Cady. 

This time around, all the sex and violence in the book was put back into the movie plus more. Scorsese was convinced to direct the movie because he felt that the movie could become a commercial success, something he needed badly if he wanted to work in Hollywood. Scorsese has directed few commercially successful movies. Cape Fear was his chance to show what he could do with a thriller movie - he needed it to be a hit if he wanted to direct in Hollywood.

He was right, Cape Fear 1991 made over $180 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange played the preyed-upon couple with Juliete Lewis playing the now precociously sexualized daughter. The critical reaction was not good, unfavorable comparisons were made to the revered 1962 version of the movie, now considered a classic.

And now we come to the new era in movie making - the limited series.

Cape Fear (showrunner Nick Antosca) is now an Apple TV limited series starring Patrick Wilson and Amy Adams as the beleaguered couple with Javier Bardem, the king of subtle menace and visceral violence, as Cady. In this version. The couple has two teenage children, a son and daughter, but that is only part of more large-scale plot changes that add to the sometimes unbearable tension in this new version of a seemingly happy family's descent into hell. 

The attorney and his family are transformed in this new version - both are attorneys now, he a defense attorney and she a civil rights one, helping imprisoned convicts prove their innocence. Their children are now the typical children in TV dramas - totally screwed-up. This family is far from the ideal version from the 1962 movie or the book.

The biggest change is Cady. He is no longer the simple-minded stalker, but, rather, a dangerous manipulator who has his own family consisting of a deranged father (Ron Perlman), sister (Juliette Lewis) and maybe a daughter (Malia Pyles).  The stakes are raised in this version too as Adams was Cady's defence lawyer while Wilson was the prosecutor in Cady's criminal trial.  Cady was arrested for the murder of his wife and pleaded guilty. The story of his release is now made part of the plot as is his acquiring a small fortune to finance his new life. Cady is now seen by the community as a victim who was unfairly convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Cady becomes a local celebrity.

The break-out performance is by Malia Pyles. The menace she brings to all of her scenes is remarkable. She is so deadly that just watching her raises the bile in one's throat. With all of her scenes just reeking with fear and potential violence, she is still able to keep us guessing about who and what she really is - an innocent dupe or calculating Beelzebul junior.

The plot is excellent with Cady layering on one disaster after another to the Bowdens until it feels as if the very walls of their lives are crushing the Bowden family. While this version compounds the gore and violence, it is nothing out of the ordinary for our times. The violence in movies and on TV now is so far removed from the 1962 movie that these two versions seem to come from different worlds, different people. As with all things, more becomes less -  the more violence we see, the more we become anesthetized to its impact on us. Like pouring more and more salt on all our food makes us need more and more salt to get the same taste. And as too much salt will do, this version of Cape Fear is guaranteed to raise your blood pressure.

 The final episode will air this Friday on Apple so you will soon be able to binge watch the series.