Alien and Aliens are often ranked very close together, and that gap is even smaller for 1962’s Cape Fear and the 1991 remake. The data gives a clear advantage to the remake, but for me they’re interchangeable. The 1962 version took Film Noir into dark and dangerous territory, mostly on the imposing shoulders of Robert Mitchum. The remake is more explicit, from Robert De Niro’s tattooed flesh to Martin Scorsese alternating between great character interactions and brutal gut punches of style. (Interestingly, in both films the actors push Max Cady’s trashy southern accent to cartoon levels.)
The photography in the original Cape Fear evokes swamp, heat and danger, and Mitchum’s physical presence does all the work of Scorsese’s grandiose style. Long before Anton Chigurh and Hannibal Lector and just a few years after Mitchum’s own crazed Preacher from Night of the Hunter his Max Cady stalked a darkened movie theater, haunting every father’s anxiety.
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