Cape Fear (1991): Collector's Edition |
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Cape Fear (1991): Collector's Edition |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Thriller |
DVD-ROM Extras Featurette-Making Of-80:02 Deleted Scenes Featurette-Behind The Scenes Of The Fourth Of July Parade Featurette-On The Set Of The Houseboat Gallery-Photo-3 Gallery-Matte Paintings Featurette-Opening Credits Theatrical Trailer Production Notes Biographies-Cast & Crew Notes-DVD Newsletter |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1991 | ||
| Running Time | 122:31 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (64:21) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Programme | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Martin Scorsese |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Robert De Niro Nick Nolte Jessica Lange Joe Dan Baker Robert Mitchum Juliette Lewis Gregory Peck Martin Balsam Illeana Douglas Fred Dalton Thompson |
| Case | Soft Brackley-Transp-Dual v2 | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music |
Bernard Herrmann Elmer Bernstein |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0  (192Kb/s)Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English French Portuguese Danish Finnish Swedish Norwegian Greek German Dutch Czech Polish Turkish Hungarian Bulgarian Spanish |
Smoking | Yes, cigars |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
(SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Mr Scorsese, (and Mr Strick, the script butcher) you missed the whole point of the movie, when you remade Cape Fear. The central thing that made Cape Fear so terrifying was that it was happening to a good man. A man who had done nothing wrong - he testified to something he saw, and that was nothing more than his civic duty. When you altered the plot so that this man wasn't as good, when you made him the lawyer defending the criminal, and worse, when you made him guilty of suppressing evidence, you removed that central point. No longer was this happening to a good man, an innocent man. Now it was one slimeball going after another slimeball. The audience no longer feels vulnerable. That was the whole point behind the film - if this could happen to a good man, it could happen to me...
You went further - no longer did this man have a loving, caring, wife, and a innocent little daughter. Now he got a shrill untrusting harpy for a wife, and a daughter who smokes pot. Why? Part of the point of the plot was this man's devotion to his family, and how he is pushed to the limits of his moral beliefs in defending them. You made it difficult to understand how he could care too much for them, and you took away most of his morals, anyway. For that matter, you took away most of his intelligence, too. Your version of this man has to have everything suggested to him - he cannot conceive of anything for himself, it has to be laid out for him by someone else - on one occasion it is the police captain, on others it is the private detective.
De Niro is a great actor. It is impressive how much he managed to make of this shambles of a script. But he cannot achieve what Robert Mitchum achieved in the original - a tension, a fear, every time he appears. This is because you have him doing stupid things - the stunt with the car is flatly unbelievable. And you made Cady a religious nutter - that's so unnecessary. Cady is far more frightening a character without the religious adornment (and without the tattoos, too).
The understatement of the original is far more effective than the gross overstated violence in this version. Yes, the understatement of the original was forced by the censorship of the time, but this version goes much further than it needs to - it goes from explicit violence into distasteful.
And the ending! In the featurette you explain why you ended it the way you did, but it is so cliched. The original's ending is far more powerful, with Sam Bowden making a decision - very impressive.
I understand that I may get a visit from the Corleone family - even so, I had to say what I've said.
In summary, gentle reader, I strongly recommend that you look to the original Cape Fear (see my review here) if you want a really suspenseful thriller, well-plotted and exciting. If you feel a need to compare the two, please watch the original first, then have a look at this botched imitation.
The movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. This is the original theatrical aspect ratio.
The picture is quite sharp and clear, perhaps a little grainy in places. Shadow detail is excellent. There's no low level noise.
Colour is fine with no oversaturation or colour bleed. There are some strange colour effects, but that's deliberate.
There are next to no film artefacts, but there is quite a bit of minor aliasing (striped clothing, blinds, car door frames, and so forth), and more than a little moire - that may or may not bother you. There are moments which display hints of edge enhancement. There's some background shimmer, but it is minor.
There are lots of subtitles. I only looked at the English ones. They are subtitles, not captions. They are accurate, well-timed, and fairly easy to read.
This is a two disc set. Both discs are single-sided and dual-layered. The layer change on the first disc comes at 64:21 during the movie. It is located at a cut, but it is visible, and slightly disruptive. The layer change on the second disc lies between titles.
| Sharpness |   |
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| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
There are five soundtracks, but I only listened to the English. It's a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
Dialogue is easy to understand and there are no audio sync problems.
Bernard Herrman's score for the original Cape Fear has been reused here, but re-arranged by Elmer Bernstein.
This is a 5.1 soundtrack, but there's not a huge amount of surround sound - the surround speakers are used mostly for deepening the soundfield. The subwoofer is used mostly to extend the bass register of the score, but it gets something of a workout in a storm sequence.
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The menu is static and silent. Easy to operate.
This is the longest Making of I've ever seen, but it is interesting. Lots of interview footage with Scorsese, and with de Niro, even interview footage with the three members of the original cast who make cameos in this version: Gregory Peck, Martin Balsam, and Robert Mitchum. Scorsese mentions how Max Cady reminds him of Travis Bickle (maybe that's one of the problems with his interpretation). We also get to see quite a bit of Wesley Strick, the writer who took the original script and, um, "changed" it.
This is a series of deleted scenes just strung together - no commentary or explanation, and no indication of where the scenes were meant to go. The footage is not 16x9 enhanced, and fairly poor quality - scratchy - looks like these sequences were fished out of a bin. The sound is probably original, too, rather than cleanly ADRed - it's muddy and difficult to make out at times.
Views from behind the cameras of this sequence, showing the number of cameras, and the number of extras, involved in filming a sequence that is not very important to the movie, but probably cost a lot to stage.
Rehearsal footage on the houseboat set - how to make your actors very very wet...
Mixtures of still photographs (full screen) and clips (2.35:1, not 16x9 enhanced) from the film.
A series of scenes without, and then with, the matte paintings.
A tribute to some of the work by Saul Bass and his wife Elaine - this shows his/their work on Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus, and Casino. Interesting to note that Bernard Herrman scored the first two. I recall a short piece about their work on Casino - it mentioned that the opening credits are always done in a rush, and the Bass team were renowned for producing high quality work on-time.
A trailer presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, not 16x9 enhanced.
Eight pages of notes about the filming.
Brief (4 pages each) bios for:
A number of web links, and a script to screen comparison. The software used is InterActual.
An advertisement for http://dvd.universalpictures.com .
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 1 set appears to have the same features as this one, except that the Region 1 disc gets a dts soundtrack in addition to the Dolby Digital one. The reviews of the R1 disc report the same aliasing and moire issues. Looks like a toss-up between the two.
This is a misconceived remake, presented rather well on DVD.
The video quality is rather good, with only aliasing to detract from it.
The audio quality is very good.
The extras are plentiful, even excessive - the only thing missing is an audio commentary.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-S733A, using Component output |
| Display | Sony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Denon AVC-A1SE |
| Speakers | Front Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5 |