Every Martin Scorsese Film Ranked Worst To Best

A remake of the 1962 psychological thriller of the same name, Cape Fear follows convicted sex offender Max Cady (Robert De Niro) as he's released from prison and sets out to get revenge on the defence attorney (Nick Nolte) who purposefully botched his case.

Max Cady is one of Scorsese's most enduring characters, an antagonist so twisted and vile you can't really look away from his antics no matter how much you want to. Watching De Niro in the role, it becomes clear he was having the time of his life playing one of cinema's most menacing bad guys.

Cape Fear is by no means Scorsese's most thoughtful or metaphorical pictures, but it might just be his most disturbing. This is the director uncaged, not trying to make any big statements about the world but instead committed to creating a deeply troubling, atmospheric thriller that holds nothing back.

It might be too on the nose in places, and the film's more disturbing sequences are slightly overcooked (and have since been parodied into oblivion), but Cape Fear remains one of Scorsese's most striking and truly horrific tales.