The publisher relives the cold war

The scene in "Cape Fear" where Robert Mitchum takes off his shirt and slides into the swamp in full reptilian regalia happens near the end of the movie and at the very height of the cold war.

When Polly Bergen says to her husband Gregory Peck, the lawyer who helped imprison Mitchum and whose family Mitchum is now terrorizing, bent on revenge after his release from prison, "I can't believe we're standing here, talking about killing somebody", she speaks for the nation circa early 1960's.

Questions of civil liberty, sexual power, good and evil are posed in black and white. "The man's an animal and you have to treat him as an animal," Martin Balsam the sherriff says to Gregory Peck when Mitchum's menace becomes clear.

"Let's talk about values," Mitchum says to Peck in one of their early confrontations, after Peck asks how much money it will take take to get Mitchum to leave town. "What do you think eight years of a man's life are worth...can you put a price on that?, Mitchum says.

The movie is now playing at a bombshelter near you.