Cape Fear

This was a hard one, guys. I’d seen plenty of visuals and references to Cape Fear, most noticeably on The Simpsons. I expected this to be a straight forward movie about a criminal getting vindictive revenge on a lawyer. I didn’t expect this to be a very realistic thriller about obsession, violence against women, paedophilia, and how rape is the worst crime against women, but the victims are always punished more heavily than the perpetrator. I could go on, but it’s all there in the movie. Gregory Peck as a helpless, petrified father is heart-breaking. Robert Mitchum is transformed from his usual goofy, charming-asshole-with-a-heart-of-gold character into a sleazy, greasy, creepy predator that was truly terrifying to watch. I’m not sure I can watch Sabrina for a while after this.

Yesterday I touched on how the theme of child-loss is such a strong, true fear to stain a gore-streaked horror movie with. This is the other one. Mitchum’s character, Max Cady is a very REAL sort of fellow. There’s hundreds like him all over the world, maybe thousands, and the film reminds us, that for the most part, society won’t help us against them until it’s too late. Maybe not even then. So, yeah. This is probably one of the scariest movies I’ve seen for Carpe Scream. This totally counts as Horror.

This is streaming on TCM On Demand for a short time only. I feel the need to state: Trigger Warning: rape, abuse of women, child rape,

Stay close to each other tonight, folks.