Robert DeNiro's evil incarnate Max Cady was the sort of villain whose name you learn and remember, even when the names of hundreds of other villains, even the really effective ones, are lost to time. Robert Mitchum played that role the first time, and Lord knows he was very capable too, though I don't think his performance there holds a candle to his similar performance in Night of the Hunter.
But then there was also Bernard Herrmann's score, which originated in Thompson's film and was carried down for usage in Scorsese's, albeit slightly reinterpreted. You can hear that score in your head right now as I'm typing this. It's super ominous, and for some reason it has a similar vibe for me as John Williams' score during the opening of the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The reason I attribute this mostly to Scorsese's version is that I had carried that one with me for more than 30 years before I finally saw the 1962 version in 2022. Inevitably, I didn't get as much out of that version. It goes back to my theory that if you love something, you're always going to like best the first version you were exposed to, even if you ultimately see a different version, and even if that different version is, by most objective standards, the better version.
In any case, the key to why any version of Cape Fear works so well is its intensity. Over the course of 128 minutes in the case of Scorsese's version and 106 minutes in the case of Thompson's, we get to know plenty well this sinister ex-con with the chilling laugh, and also become satisfactorily acquainted with the family he's torturing.
Couldn't work as well over 509 minutes, could it?
Well you might be surprised at the sustained intensity of the Apple TV+ version of Cape Fear, a ten-episode elongation of the essential story and dynamics that had twice been previously depicted as adaptations of John D. MacDonald's 1957 novel The Executioners. While we're doling out credits, Nick Antosca is the showrunner.
I think the reason I started watching was the casting of Max Cady. He's played by none other than Javier Bardem, who has proven his knack for villainy in such places as Skyfall and especially No Country for Old Men. The guy who played the cruel and sadistic Anton Chigurh could definitely play Max Cady.
Of course, since I became acquainted with all the primary cast members within about three seconds of each other the first time I saw any promotional materials for Cape Fear, I shouldn't rule out the possibility that Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson played an equally significant role in my clicking play. I've always liked both actors, with Wilson being a special favorite of mine. CCH Pounder also has a role in this, as does a young actress who has really caught my attention in recent years, Lily Collias, who of course plays the role Juliette Lewis played in Scorsese's version. (Is Juliette Lewis in this also? Could be. No spoilers.)
I don't watch a lot of TV that I'm not also watching with my wife, but I like to have at least one series going for nights when it's just too late to start a movie. And because I've been really dragging my heels on finishing the series run of Mythic Quest, which has steadily lost interest for me over the course of its four seasons, I decided to give Cape Fear a whirl.
I won't say that it absolutely grabbed me from the first episode. I was positive on that episode, but not addicted. In fact it might have taken me two weeks before I watched episode 2.
After that, I was watching one about every four nights, and there was one time I even watched episodes on consecutive nights.
Simply put, I could have never guessed how the combustible threat posed by Cady against the family of the lawyers who didn't properly defend him, leading to his 17-year prison term, could remain at such a high level of immediacy across so many episodes. And in case you need that threat to be goosed just a little bit, each episode begins with something sinister as a cold open, before Herrmann's score kicks in and the images on the screen are slowly superseded by the title.
Needless to say, there's a lot more extra plot material here than in the previous movies. How much, if any, comes from the original novel, I'm not sure. But we learn a lot more about Cady's extended family, and burrow further into the lives of Anna and Tom Bowden and their children Zack and Natalie. I believe Zack is an addition to the family dynamic from the previous source material. Both children are in their late teens and they are both messed with by a woman who may or may not be Cady's daughter.
None of it feels like filler. All of it gives us a useful expansion on these characters, to care more about their ultimate fates and to learn more about what they may or may not be guilty of. The material is messy and complicated in the best possible ways.
And you can get a lot of good stuff from the slow burn of a man who is trying to systematically destroy a family, both from without and from within. Cady lays traps that don't spring right away, and has plausible deniability on many of them. In fact, the show is clever enough to create times when we ask ourselves if Cady is actually the true source of the threat to this family, or whether some other combination of elements might be responsible. The show takes advantage of the fact that it comes out at a time when we no longer want to see monolithic evil depicted on screen, and every villain has a complicated backstory.
I was also fascinated by the casting choice of Bardem as Cady, because that changes him from a sort of southern redneck to a man with a Latin upbringing. As brilliant of an actor as he is, Bardem probably can't do an American accent, not without his Spanish accent creeping through. And so they just don't worry about it. What's more, they lean into it, as we see Max speaking Spanish in prison in flashback sequences. They just basically don't even worry about the fact that his other family members we meet -- who include a father played by Ron Perlman -- are not Latino in the slightest. I can't remember if there is an in-world explanation for why he has a different accent, but I'd say it is the equivalent of race blind casting. And I say "equivalent" rather than just "race blind casting" because race blind casting is usually ignoring someone's physical appearance, and the apparent anachronistic quality of it in a historical setting, while this is more about the actor's voice. So, race deaf casting?
I could probably go on more about the show. But all you really need to know is that I may not have been addicted at the start, but I was by the end. Any bumps along the way were small and soon forgotten.
Obviously Cape Fear is not the first movie to be elongated into a TV show. It's not the 101st. It might not even be the 1,001st. But I don't usually watch these shows, so I thought it was worth spending a little time on this one.
And that's especially because the thing that makes a film great, in comparison to a TV show of the same material, is its brevity. A great screenplay gives you an emotional connection to characters you've just met, even though it only has 100 pages of script to do so. Especially for someone with my proclivities, that economy should be prized over the lack of conciseness that's a luxury in a TV show, which might sprawl out over a dozen seasons.
However, Cape Fear is proof that the extra time with the same material can also work, and work quite well.
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