Cape Fear

Cape Fear (1962) is a crime thriller by J. Lee Thompson you can watch online on iFILM. Gregory Peck plays lawyer Sam Bowden, whose settled life falls apart when a man who swore to get even walks out of prison.

Eight years earlier Bowden testified against Max Cady and put him away. Now Cady (Robert Mitchum) is back in town, circling the lawyer's family: his wife Peggy and their teenage daughter Nancy. He breaks no law. He simply turns up nearby, watches, and waits. The police can do nothing, the courts offer no help, and the threat keeps closing in. At some point Bowden realizes he cannot protect his family by the rules, so he stops playing by them.

The film is adapted from John D. MacDonald's novel, scored by Bernard Herrmann, and was remade three decades later with Robert De Niro. Yet Mitchum's Cady, with his lazy grin and ever-present cigar, remains one of the most unsettling villains of classic Hollywood. Stream Cape Fear (1962) online on iFILM.