MovieChat Forums > Cape Fear (1962) Discussion > The risks Cady was taking (possible spoi...

The risks Cady was taking (possible spoilers).

posted 12 years ago by hobnob53
9 replies | jump to latest

Possible Spoilers!

Throughout the movie, it's repeatedly said that Cady is being very clever and cautious in his acts. Obviously he doesn't want to go back to prison (as is made clear by his reaction at the end, when Peck tells him he's going away for life).

Yet so much of what he does carries huge chances of having just that fate befall him.

Assaulting Diane (the bar girl) carries the risk that she would press charges and testify against him. Attacking Peggy in the houseboat is even more likely to result in his being arrested, tried and convicted. And, of course, his final attack on Nancy also holds great risk that she would indeed testify against him. Even the story he tells Bowden at the bar, about how he went after his ex-wife after he got out, was an enormously risky thing to do.

Cady was gambling in each case that none of the women would testify against him out of fear or embarrassment. Maybe, but each of these assaults was a completely stupid thing for him to do, especially as they could have stopped him from carrying out his "primary mission", getting revenge on Sam Bowden.

The letter he said he had his ex write could have been easily challenged in court as written under duress (which it was), and not as an alibi for his actions (which surely no one would believe the ex-wife would have agreed to). There was no guarantee Diane wouldn't go after him, and there was evidence against him there. Peggy would absolutely have pressed charges and testified against him. Even Nancy might have been willing to come forward and undergo the ordeal of a trial just to put Cady away.

Point is, for a supposedly careful man, Cady engaged in some very violent behavior with absolutely no guarantee that the women involved would simply (and conveniently) let the assaults go. All this is at odds with the allegedly cautious and systematic behavior he was supposedly adopting in order to get to the Bowdens.

Not to mention (as I did in another thread I just posted) that all this ignores the fact that he murdered the policeman assigned to guard the Bowden family at the houseboat. This alone would virtually guarantee a death sentence for him. That was his stupidest action of all.

Did Cady actually believe he could evade prison after all these blatant crimes? This is the one big flaw in the film's story.

[–] LittleBrother55 12 years ago

I finally got around to seeing this movie when it popped up on Antenna TV last night.

Although I pretty much agree with your point, I also think a "devil's advocate" case could be made that it's not at all certain that Cady would go to jail for the rest of his life, despite the apparent string of violent felonies perpetrated on the Bowdens and the deputy during the climactic scenes.

Just for the sake of discussion, assume Cady would continue being represented by Grafton, who was depicted as a smart and aggressive advocate.

The murder of the deputy is the most heinous crime-- a capital crime, just as you note. But when Cady overpowers and drowns him, they make a point of having him say something about "not a mark on you".

Sure, the circumstantial evidence and the concept of considering "the totality of the circumstances" makes it seem like an open-and-shut case-- but it's possible that a sharp defense lawyer like Grafton could create a basis for "reasonable doubt".

That leaves the various assault charges. Assuming that there was no sexual assault, the assault and battery on Peggy and especially Nancy would likely put Cady away for a long time-- but not for life, I bet. Neither of them were injured anywhere near as severely as Diane Taylor was earlier in the story.

And-- again, assuming aggressive spin control from Grafton-- the defense could claim that Cady actually abandoned his attacks on the females and was attempting to leave when intercepted by Sam.

Cady could, say, claim that he went there looking for Sam, and cop to roughing up Peggy and Nancy because they wouldn't give him any information about Sam's whereabouts-- so he gave up and left, only to be ambushed by Sam.

After all, the ongoing obstacle for Sam throughout the film was that he was being largely successfully "set up" by Cady as being hostile, harassing, etc.

In keeping with the premise that Cady is psychopathically shewd and wily, he could come up with similar self-serving versions of his encounters with the deputy and Sam.

Since there were no witnesses to Cady's final spree except the victims, and perhaps insufficient objective physical evidence to establish that the deputy's death was first-degree premediated murder, I think it's conceivable that he could get away with less than a life sentence.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

I think you raise some interesting aspects about how Cady could defend himself, LittleBrother55.

Still, I wasn't making the point that any of these crimes (except killing the cop, which would have brought him the death penalty) would necessarily put Cady away for life -- only that they could have resulted in his being arrested and tried, and sent away for some period of time, which would have thrown away his chances of carrying out his planned revenge against Bowden, at least to the extent he wanted. Since getting even with Bowden was his "primary mission", so to speak, doing all these things to these various women carried huge risks that he'd be caught and imprisoned before he could get to Bowden.

I agree that a lawyer like Grafton could have made it difficult for the state to prove its case in any of these instances. But the risks were still there.

Point is, if Cady were truly clever and determined, he'd have laid off these extraneous "diversions" and concentrated solely on getting Bowden.

As to the cop, there I see little chance that Cady could have gotten away with it. His character would have become an issue, and no jury would have looked sympathetically on someone who had by then clearly been stalking the Bowdens. (Otherwise why was he at their houseboat and in the water?) Besides, he was wrong when he said "not a mark on you" to the dead cop. Strangulation does leave marks, and how else explain that the cop drowned? It's a lot more than circumstantial evidence, and as I said he wouldn't have any sympathy -- or much doubt -- going for him, especially having murdered a policeman. He'd be executed for sure...which is why Bowden saying he'd be going away for life is puzzling, since he'd already killed the cop. Or did Bowden know this yet? Probably not, from the sequence of events in the movie.

Plus it would have been nice to see Grafton squirm in court, with a client like Cady.

It's neat that in the 1991 remake, Cady's shifty lawyer was played by...Gregory Peck! Robert Mitchum was the police chief, and Martin Balsam the judge. Great cameos all around.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

My sense is that the movie makes it increasingly clear that while Cady is a psychopath and doesn't want to return to prison, his Achilles heel, as it were, is his obsession with the lawyer, Bowden, and his family. As the plot unfolds, the ante is raised, sometimes by the law, most of the time by Cady.

By the last half-hour or thereabouts I think it's fair to say that Cady has "lost it", or coming closer to doing so with each passing moment. His obsession has become an addiction. Yes, he drowns the policeman in such a way as to leave no traces of who did it but overall the likelihood of his succeeding in his plans was diminishing by the minute.

The presence of the policeman on guard should have tipped him off that all was not right. There could have been a hidden camera or tape recorder on the boat. All there had to be was someone, anyone, a midget hiding in a closet who saw and recorded what was going on, and Cady was finished.

That Cady drowned the cop, now making him a murderer, essentially tells to the viewer that Cady isn't going to make it. His actions have become too extreme even for him. For most of the film he was on top of his game but going upriver after Bowden's wife and child was a sucker move. He should have guessed that he was being baited.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Agreed.

[–] ecarle 12 years ago

I responded to this on another thread here, but I generally agree, too.

Max Cady is a brilliant psychopath, but he is a psychopath, and in real life, psychos "lose it."

I figure Cady's plan was to proceed "within the law" for as long as he could. But once only that cop guard was between him and his prey -- he was finally willing to "lose his legal immunity" and kill.

Perhaps Cady's plan always had murder at the end -- Bowden, the wife, the daughter, all of them if need be. The cop's presence told Cady "Well, if I'm going to start killing people, now is the time." And he did.

Cady did not want to go back to prison, so I figure he was counting on killing his victims and escaping into Mexico etc. Or he was counting on getting killed.

Neither happened.

[–] RugGuy 12 years ago

There are no spoilers for a 50+ year old movie.

Besides, if people don't want to find out things about a movie they shouldn't be reading on a board where people discuss the movie.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Oh? Have you seen, or do you know about, every 50+-year-old movie?

People sometimes come onto a site about a movie they haven't seen to get an idea of what others think, or pick up some information. That's one reason why IMDb asks people to state at the outset that a thread may contain spoilers, so as not to give anything away to people who haven't seen a film.

Anyway, why bother to comment on this apsect? Hundreds of posts all over IMDb have spoiler warnings. What does it matter to you?

[–] RugGuy 12 years ago

"People sometimes come onto a site about a movie they haven't seen to get an idea of what others think, or pick up some information." To use your thought process that's a risk they run.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Actually, that's your thought process, from your first post, and I actually agree, people run the risk. But what's the big deal about indicating spoilers? How does this hurt anything? This is kind of a pointless topic.