Cape Fear
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Robert Mitchum is the prime-time star saluted by TCM tonight, in a double feature that shows his range, and, more than anything else, his charismatic screen presence. In this 1962 movie, he’s an ex-convict who targets the lawyer responsible for his conviction – and as menacing as Robert De Niro was in Martin Scorsese’s intense 1991 remake of this film, Mitchum is even scarier in the original. Even Gregory Peck, who cuts a fairly commanding screen presence himself, looks understandably cowed as Mitchum’s intended victim of revenge.