Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Cape Fear
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1962 · FILM

Cape Fear

An upright attorney must shield his wife and children from a relentless ex‑convict who, after eight years behind bars, returns to exact revenge for the lawyer’s testimony that sent him to prison.

“Now he had only one weapon left—murder!”

Directed by
J Lee Thompson
Written by
John D Macdonald, James R Webb
Runtime
106 min
DramaThriller
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

Sam Bowden testifies against Max Cady after witnessing him commit a rape. Cady is sentenced to prison and released after serving 8 years. Upon his release, Cady begins to stalk Bowden and his family, though he consistently avoids breaking the law.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 17

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by George TomasiniShot by Sam LeavittScored by Bernard Herrmann

Box Office

1962 · Box office

✅ Made its money back — grossed 2.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$103.0M

Budget$35.0M
Worldwide gross$103.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Ein Köder für die Bestiede
  • Les Nerfs à viffr
  • Il promontorio della paurait

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating. Sign in to add what you know.

Related News