CAPE FEAR contains a lot of feverish gab from screenwriter Wesley Strick, but the single, simplest, most telling line of dialogue is delivered, with consummate sarcastic honesty, by Robert Mitchum: “Well, pardon me all over the place.” By the time 128 minutes of savagery have been dished out in 1991’s remake of 1962’s classic that starred Mitchum and Gregory Peck (both cameo in this one) you might feel a ‘pardon all over the place’ is due from Strick and director Martin Scorsese for wallowing in so much surplus sadism that the good work around it seems wafer thin compensation for witnessing all the torment.

“Let’s get somethin’ straight here. I spent 14 years in an eight by nine cell surrounded by people who were less than human. My mission in that time was to become more than human. You see? Granddaddy used to handle snakes in church, Granny drank strychnine. I guess you could say I had a leg up, genetically speaking.”

As in the earlier movie, based off John D. MacDonald’s novel “The Executioners”, the plot has lawyer ‘Sam Bowden’ (Nick Nolte) stalked by ‘Max Cady’ (Robert De Niro) who blames Bowden for the 14 years that recently freed Cady spent stewing in prison. Depraved, cunning and obsessed, Max is not just after Sam, he’s bent on destroying his family, and anyone who gets in the way. ‘The law’ proves unable to stop him. Can Bowden? How?

Besides the dynamic leads, Sam’s wife is played by Jessica Lange, meaty supporting roles are covered by Joe Don Baker and Illeana Douglas, and guest vets Peck and Mitchum are joined by another colleague from ’62, Martin Balsam. Adding a further link to the first movie, Elmer Bernstein adapted, arranged and conducted Bernard Herrmann’s peerless score from the original. The important part of Sam’s teenage daughter ‘Danielle’ was given to 17-year-old Juliette Lewis. While set in North Carolina, filming took place in Florida and Georgia.

Because of the cast and director, herds of expectant fans came to sample the brew they stirred up, many piqued by the memory of the first nail-biter. The domestic response of $79,100,000 zoomed to #12 for the year, part of a worldwide gross that reached $182,292,000. Critics, hard-wired to accept anything from ‘Marty’, went predictably ape over his ‘technique’, though a good number wondered why it was necessary to gather so much talent and spend $35,000,000 to remake something whose nightmare aspect was unsettling enough as it was—‘Wow, I had a horrible dream: I hope to have an even more sickening one tonight’.

Excess “all over the place.”  Cady’s eight years in ’62 have become fourteen. Bowden now carries some blame (because in the more mature 90s’ we’re ALL guilty), his wife is half-harpy, and their Bush-era teenager looks to have left innocence in her first doll house. The sexual assault threat is magnified, the graphic, bloody violence goes thru the roof (the attack on Douglas is horrific), Max isn’t just monstrous but nearly supernatural: the climactic battle so absurdly overblown all it lacks is a swim-by from the Creature From The Black Lagoon. Did anyone see this movie and walk out feeling good about life?

Really, Marty?

De Niro’s impressive fury fountain got him his fifth Oscar nomination as Best Actor (bested by another chew-inclined psychopath, ‘Hannibal Lecter’ as imagined by Anthony Hopkins and The Silence Of The Lambs) and odd-girl-out/wild child Lewis was nominated for Supporting Actress. Well done? Sure. So are air strikes.

With Fred Dalton Thompson and Zully Montero.