Soundtrack Watch: 'Cape Fear' Remake Score Rises from the Depths at Quartet

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Quartet Records will revisit a special musical approach to a remake of a classic suspense thriller: Martin Scorsese's 1991 adaptation of Cape Fear. The 2CD set, will include a remastered and expanded presentations of Elmer Bernstein's score to the remake, adapted from the original 1962 film's music by Bernard Herrmann. Produced by Neil S. Bulk and Mike Matessino (who also remasters the score from engineer Shawn Murphy's original six-track mixes), the set features both the expanded score presentation and the original soundtrack album, augmented by Jeff Bond's liner notes.

Universal's original Cape Fear, adapted from John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners, was a stunning Hitchcockian picture telling the story of Sam Bowden, a Georgia attorney whose life is turned upside down by Max Cady, a convicted rapist Bowden has a history with, who emerges from prison to engage in psychological warfare with Bowden, his wife and their teenage daughter. Scorsese's version, from a script by Arachnophobia scribe Wesley Strick, was initially developed as a vehicle for Steven Spielberg until the two traded projects; Spielberg got Schindler's List, a film he'd considered making for nearly a decade, and Scorsese, fresh off the controversial 1989 release The Last Temptation of Christ and the Oscar-winning crime picture Goodfellas (1990), got to pay special homage to The Master of Suspense here.

The remake offers intriguing updates to the story: this time, Bowden (Nick Nolte) wasn't a lawyer who intervened in Cady's crime but Cady's public defender, so disgusted by his client's actions that he withheld evidence that could have reduced his sentence. During his sentence, the illiterate Cady (Robert De Niro's seventh role with Scorsese, a year after Goodfellas) taught himself to read and studied the complexities of the justice system to add an intellectual edge to his brutal revenge mission. The cast was rounded out by Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis as Bowden's wife and teenage daughter, while three of the original film's stars - Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam - all appeared in supporting roles.

The original film's director, J. Lee Thompson, was open about the film's debt to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, imitating his camera angles and black-and-white lighting and featuring a score from Hitch's frequent composer Herrmann, who added only minimal winds to his expanded string section and wrote dissonant figures to underline the fateful confrontation between the duo. Scorsese kept the debt going in both visuals as well as audio, paying homage to the legendary Hollywood composer who died mere hours after wrapping the recording of a standout score to Scorsese's Taxi Driver in 1975. hiring Herrmann's friend and contemporary Elmer Bernstein to adapt that original score for his picture - going so far as to incorporate thematic material from Herrmann's rejected score to Hitchcock's Torn Curtain. (It was a trick that Universal would emulate less than a decade later, when Danny Elfman adapted Herrmann's unforgettable score for Gus Van Sant's forgettable semi-shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.)

While perhaps overlooked in Scorsese's immensely influential filmography, Cape Fear was a box office hit, earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for De Niro and Lewis, and is remembered by Hollywood to this day: Spielberg and Scorsese will executive produce another adaptation for episodic television, to air on AppleTV+ with a cast that includes Javier Bardem as Cady and Amy Adams as Bowden's wife.

This exciting new title is ready to order below from Quartet Records.

Bernard Herrmann (adapted, arranged and conducted by Elmer Bernstein), Cape Fear (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack - Expanded Edition) (Quartet QR573, 2025 - original film released 1991)

Disc 1: Score presentation