Very Charged Movie

Robert Mitchum's performance as the stalker Max Cady gave Cape Fear an edge. The story's hero Gregory Peck, although a stellar actor, came off as somewhat sterile (although he was handed the more unforgiving role as the protective husband and father.) Peck's performance was very emotionally charged and intense, but Mitchum had this dark animalistic sexuality to him that was at once appealing and frightening. Max Cady is charming and laid-back, but underneath lies a raging storm of psychopathic hatred and bitterness.

In modern terminology, Cady had a sex addiction. (Remember, he is stalking Peck's family is in retribution for when Peck, as a simple passerby, stopped Cady from raping a woman in a dark alley years ago.) He is extremely lecherous. He makes innuendo's at the bowling lanes waitress and Peck's wife and daughter and seduces a less-than-chaste woman in a bar as soon as he gets into town. Two scenes are especially erotic, one at the boat dock when he ogles the budding teenage daughter who is wearing a pair of tight little boy shorts and the other on the riverboat where he opens Polly Bergen's dress and seductively smears eggs all over her chest.

And the sexuality displayed in the scene where Mitchum finally corners the pretty young girl in the dark play room is so, so wrong. There's silence at first, adding to the tension. He just looks at her, the water dripping and glistening on his big, powerful chest and arms. From the look in his eyes, you know what's on his mind.