Rob Daniel introduces his new publication Cape Fear. Daniel offers a full reappraisal of Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) as it reaches its 30th anniversary.
When telling friends I was writing a study of Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) for the Devil’s Advocates series, many responded with congratulations, then a question: “Is Cape Fear a horror film?”
For the uninitiated, the film’s plot revolves around ex-convict Max Cady (Robert De Niro) and the campaign of terror he wages against his defence lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), and Sam’s family. Years earlier, Sam buried evidence that could have seen the evidently guilty Cady walk away from a rape and battery charge. Upon release from prison, a now self-educated Cady plans to rape Sam’s wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) before murdering the Bowdens as revenge for Sam’s betrayal of his oath.
The film is based upon John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel “The Executioners” and J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 adaptation, also called Cape Fear and starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck in the De Niro and Nolte roles respectively. Both the book and the original movie sit comfortably within the thriller genre. But Scorsese’s version is a different beast.
In answering that question, “Is Cape Fear a horror film?” I would deliver a potted version of the argument laid out in the book: Scorsese’s 1991 remake only really works when viewed as a horror film. His approach to the thriller genre draws heavily upon the more infernal elements of his Catholicism; De Niro’s Cady is infused with the diabolical and the supernatural, depicted as a demonic entity summoned by the family’s trauma and guilt. The raised temperature of the director’s filmmaking in Cape Fear owes more to horror cinema than conventions found in the thriller.
Also, as Kim Newman notes in Nightmare Movies (2011), Scorsese is a director “whose horror films are rarely recognised as such”. Here is a filmmaker who based camera moves in Taxi Driver (1976) on the cinema of Mario Bava and Val Lewton, and Raging Bull’s (1980) centrepiece boxing match on the shower scene from Psycho (1960). He kickstarted the yuppie comedy with 1985’s After Hours, a movie that consciously transforms nocturnal New York into Hades. Plus, he is an artist who does not flinch from splashing his canvas red. A Cape Fear with Scorsese’s name on it was never going to simply revisit the same waters explored in the book and Thompson’s 1962 original.
This “Cape Fear as horror film” premise led to Wesley Strick, the film’s writer, who agreed to discuss the movie with me. During our discussion he recounted how an ending he had scripted, partially based on a moment from MacDonald’s novel, was removed because it robbed Cady of a supernatural malevolence. For more on that… you’ll have to read the book.
Strick also discussed his reasons for muddying the film’s moral and ethical waters. In the novel and the 1962 film, Sam is a witness against Cady at the antagonist’s trial; from his first draft Strick introduced the intriguing conundrum of Sam being the defence lawyer who compromises his oath, back when Steven Spielberg was the intended director (in an example of reductive auteur worship, upon release most commentators attributed this change to Scorsese’s input).
Although garnering many positive notices upon release, reaction was divisive, and Cape Fear does not enjoy the best critical reputation. Even amongst its admirers it is regarded as minor Scorsese, a movie made to appease his Hollywood masters before moving back into the more personal stuff. A prominent critic over the years has been Scorsese himself, who in an interview once said, “quite honestly I don’t know if it works or not”. My Devil’s Advocate book is a case for the defence, arguing for the film to be recognised as an important Scorsese picture both in theme and execution.
I soon discovered the movie has lost none of its power to shock in the thirty years since release. One friend who watched the film sent me a six-minute WhatsApp message describing all the ways in which she hated the movie. “It’s everything that is wrong with the world,” was a particularly memorable remark.
Addressing the controversy meant dedicating a chapter to the film’s sexual politics and the depiction of sexual threat and sexual violence. (“Just the one chapter?” quipped another friend, who was also less than taken with the film.) The movie’s lurid tone and placement of sexual threat as one of several story elements is inarguably filmmaking from a different era, as is a particular element of the filmmaking technique during a scene in which Cady attempts to turn Danielle against her family. Scorsese’s use of female characters to illustrate the toxicity of their male counterparts is more difficult now than at time of release. My commentary on these aspects of the film is inevitably gendered, and readers will decide whether my analysis is successful. Hopefully, I avoided the kind of ethical compromises of which Sam Bowden found himself capable…
Devil’s Advocates titles are amongst my favourite books on cinema, so I felt a weight of responsibility in contributing to the series, particularly as this is my first book, and written to coincide with Cape Fear’s 30th anniversary. But diving deep into the film’s stormy waters also proved something of a sanity saver, researching and writing the first draft from October 2020 to March 2021, a time when we were in and out of (but mainly in) various states of lockdown. Exploring the brilliance and wrestling with the difficulties of Scorsese’s film, along with revisiting his filmography and favourite movies, was a productive and enjoyable way of avoiding the plague.
Now, almost two years after beginning the proposal, the book itself is ready to be published. I hope you enjoy our journey down the Cape Fear river.
When telling friends I was writing a study of Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) for the Devil’s Advocates series, many responded with congratulations, then a question: “Is Cape Fear a horror film?”
For the uninitiated, the film’s plot revolves around ex-convict Max Cady (Robert De Niro) and the campaign of terror he wages against his defence lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), and Sam’s family. Years earlier, Sam buried evidence that could have seen the evidently guilty Cady walk away from a rape and battery charge. Upon release from prison, a now self-educated Cady plans to rape Sam’s wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) before murdering the Bowdens as revenge for Sam’s betrayal of his oath.
The film is based upon John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel “The Executioners” and J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 adaptation, also called Cape Fear and starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck in the De Niro and Nolte roles respectively. Both the book and the original movie sit comfortably within the thriller genre. But Scorsese’s version is a different beast.
In answering that question, “Is Cape Fear a horror film?” I would deliver a potted version of the argument laid out in the book: Scorsese’s 1991 remake only really works when viewed as a horror film. His approach to the thriller genre draws heavily upon the more infernal elements of his Catholicism; De Niro’s Cady is infused with the diabolical and the supernatural, depicted as a demonic entity summoned by the family’s trauma and guilt. The raised temperature of the director’s filmmaking in Cape Fear owes more to horror cinema than conventions found in the thriller.
Also, as Kim Newman notes in Nightmare Movies (2011), Scorsese is a director “whose horror films are rarely recognised as such”. Here is a filmmaker who based camera moves in Taxi Driver (1976) on the cinema of Mario Bava and Val Lewton, and Raging Bull’s (1980) centrepiece boxing match on the shower scene from Psycho (1960). He kickstarted the yuppie comedy with 1985’s After Hours, a movie that consciously transforms nocturnal New York into Hades. Plus, he is an artist who does not flinch from splashing his canvas red. A Cape Fear with Scorsese’s name on it was never going to simply revisit the same waters explored in the book and Thompson’s 1962 original.
This “Cape Fear as horror film” premise led to Wesley Strick, the film’s writer, who agreed to discuss the movie with me. During our discussion he recounted how an ending he had scripted, partially based on a moment from MacDonald’s novel, was removed because it robbed Cady of a supernatural malevolence. For more on that… you’ll have to read the book.
Strick also discussed his reasons for muddying the film’s moral and ethical waters. In the novel and the 1962 film, Sam is a witness against Cady at the antagonist’s trial; from his first draft Strick introduced the intriguing conundrum of Sam being the defence lawyer who compromises his oath, back when Steven Spielberg was the intended director (in an example of reductive auteur worship, upon release most commentators attributed this change to Scorsese’s input).
Although garnering many positive notices upon release, reaction was divisive, and Cape Fear does not enjoy the best critical reputation. Even amongst its admirers it is regarded as minor Scorsese, a movie made to appease his Hollywood masters before moving back into the more personal stuff. A prominent critic over the years has been Scorsese himself, who in an interview once said, “quite honestly I don’t know if it works or not”. My Devil’s Advocate book is a case for the defence, arguing for the film to be recognised as an important Scorsese picture both in theme and execution.
I soon discovered the movie has lost none of its power to shock in the thirty years since release. One friend who watched the film sent me a six-minute WhatsApp message describing all the ways in which she hated the movie. “It’s everything that is wrong with the world,” was a particularly memorable remark.
Addressing the controversy meant dedicating a chapter to the film’s sexual politics and the depiction of sexual threat and sexual violence. (“Just the one chapter?” quipped another friend, who was also less than taken with the film.) The movie’s lurid tone and placement of sexual threat as one of several story elements is inarguably filmmaking from a different era, as is a particular element of the filmmaking technique during a scene in which Cady attempts to turn Danielle against her family. Scorsese’s use of female characters to illustrate the toxicity of their male counterparts is more difficult now than at time of release. My commentary on these aspects of the film is inevitably gendered, and readers will decide whether my analysis is successful. Hopefully, I avoided the kind of ethical compromises of which Sam Bowden found himself capable…
Devil’s Advocates titles are amongst my favourite books on cinema, so I felt a weight of responsibility in contributing to the series, particularly as this is my first book, and written to coincide with Cape Fear’s 30th anniversary. But diving deep into the film’s stormy waters also proved something of a sanity saver, researching and writing the first draft from October 2020 to March 2021, a time when we were in and out of (but mainly in) various states of lockdown. Exploring the brilliance and wrestling with the difficulties of Scorsese’s film, along with revisiting his filmography and favourite movies, was a productive and enjoyable way of avoiding the plague.
Now, almost two years after beginning the proposal, the book itself is ready to be published. I hope you enjoy our journey down the Cape Fear river.
For more information on Cape Fear, please visit our website.
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