Three Faces of Fear

 

Remakes have always been commonplace in Hollywood but for decades television series versions of feature films were always judged to be second rate. For every successful small screen adaptation like Buffy the Vampire Slayer there are dozens of forgettable attempts like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Lethal Weapon.

In 1962 after the movie going public had been scared out of the seats by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) actor-producer Gregory Peck had the idea to bring John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners to the big screen. Changing the title to Cape Fear, Peck hired the director of his previous film The Guns of Navarone (1961), Englishman J. Lee Thompson to bring a special Hitchcock-like quality to the project. Still fresh from his Oscar winning role as a southern lawyer fighting racism in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Gregory Peck this time starred as a different kind of lawyer, one capable of bending the law to protect his family who are being stalked by a psychopathic rapist and ex-con played by Robert Mitchum. Opposite Peck in one of the most memorable villain roles in his career, Mitchum is a terrifying menace whose bestial swagger oozes leering insinuations about Peck’s young teenage daughter. Fresh from Psycho, Hitchcock music composer Bernard Herrman contributes a nerve-jangling film score that accentuates the unrelenting threat and shock for a Sixties audience who were unaccustomed to overt depictions of sexual assault. Reactionary in its depiction of a justice system that seems unable to protect average citizens from violent criminals, the film was a significant hit with both critics and movie-goers alike.

In 1991 director Martin Scorsese and producer Steven Spielberg decided to update the same material for a contemporary remake. This Cape Fear would increase the violence and dramatic stakes by giving marital problems to the protagonist lawyer played by Nick Nolte, who in this version willfully suppressed evidence that could have helped his client’s case. Modern sensibilities are also expressed by turning the previously innocent daughter into a more sexually curious adolescent played by an Oscar nominated Juliette Lewis. Scorsese chose his most frequent on-screen leading man Robert De Niro to play the evil ex-convict who tortures the family of his former defence attorney whom he blames for his conviction. Unfortunately, De Niro’s theatrical Southern drawl and cartoonishly mannered performance undermines the credibility of the suspense. His cardboard villain together with Scorsese’s baroque camera and lighting effects, give the film an artificial melodramatic quality that only seems to work in the scenes of sexual danger between Lewis and De Niro. An hysterically colorful version that does not improve on the black and white original, Cape Fear (1991) must be viewed as a missed opportunity by this pair of world class filmmakers.

35 years and many f-bombs later comes this new 10 part streaming adaptation of Cape Fear starring Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson and Javier Bardem. Although executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and despite some rather heavy handed visual and musical references to their 1991 film, this Apple TV series version has all the excessive ingredients of an over-egged pudding. Now it’s the wife (Adams) who is the alcoholic defence lawyer whom ex-con (Bardem) blames for his wrongful imprisonment. To put it even more over the top, she gave birth to a daughter from a failed relationship during the trail, and after her client was convicted she married the prosecutor (Wilson). There is also a son, whose anti-social drug addiction leads him to bite off his own toe while in an anger induced stupor. Not to be left out of the various family crises, the husband and father is also using some sort of secret drug self-medication. Blood and gore take the place of any suspense in the early episodes making any shocks seem cliched and predictable. What aren’t as predictable are the performances, especially those of the two protagonists Adams and Bardem. Both are humanistic rather than theatrical in their acting styles, communicating a tense realism to their scenes together that helps to tamp down the melodramatic plotting. Their welcome chemistry should have kept audiences watching until the end but they were poorly served by a very free adaptation of the novel that goes right off the rails in terms of plausibility. The previous versions had their moments of histrionics but they never had you questioning the filmmakers for their narrative choices.

Cape Fear has always been a powerful story. It deals with the issue of legal justice versus primal instincts. Now more than ever themes like these are important to address and portray. Do we want to live in a society protected by the rule of law or do we allow the slow degradation of our primitive selves to govern our actions? Watch any of these three versions and ask yourself that crucial question.