Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962, USA)

Cape Fear is perhaps the greatest Hitchcock film that Hitchcock didn’t direct, though the film certainly stands on its own merits. Released in 1962, the film was produced by lead actor Gregory Peck. Peck brought on director J. Lee Thompson, with whom he had collaborated on the very successful Guns of Navarone. Peck and Thompson brought along a number of recurring Hitchcock collaborators, including editor George Tomasini and composer Bernard Herrmann, whose score for the film is among his most memorable and has been reused in both Martin Scorsese’s remake of the film and the recent Apple series.

To add to this, the film has an outstanding supporting cast including Martin Balsam (who had recently appeared in Hitchcock’s Psycho) and a still relatively unknown Telly Savalas. But the standout of course, is veteran star Robert Mitchum as the lead villain Max Cady. Mitchum was notorious for being volatile on set, and this perhaps adds to the real tension that is visible onscreen. While much of the film was filmed on sound stages, the film was also shot on location in Savannah, Georgia. Mitchum was particularly upset about this location, as he had once served on a chain gang in the area.

The film nearly ran afoul of censors. Certain aspects that were more explicit in John D. Macdonald’s novel The Executioners (1957), the novel which forms the basis of the film, were made more implicit in the film adaptation - such as Cady’s intentions toward Sam Bowden’s daughter Nancy. The film’s finale is electric, with the now famus egg cracking scene by Mitchum being one of the most iconic in film history. Thompson’s direction elevates the source material to new heights, and results in one of the most iconic American films of the early 1960s. It is not surprising to see its legacy lives on.

8/10