The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Famed actor Charles Laughton created a chilling horror-noir classic in his first and only foray behind the camera.


Directed by: Charles Laughton
Cinematography by: Stanley Cortez
Country: United States


Along with Ikiru (1952), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), and a few others, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter was one of the movies I saw in my film class during my life-changing sophomore semester in college that made me want to pursue film further.


Although it was still well before I would ever willfully choose to watch a black-and-white movie, Ikiru and The Night of the Hunter at the very least made me start to think that black-and-white films weren’t all pointless bores; Ikiru’s finely-crafted humanism and The Night of the Hunter’s haunting lyricism are impossible to ignore, as are Kurosawa’s frame composition and Laughton’s indelible imagery.


Based on the novel by Davis Grubb, legendary actor Charles Laughton adapted this moralistic parable of childhood nightmare in his first and only foray behind the camera. Robert Mitchum plays one of cinema’s most unforgettable wolves in sheep’s clothing as Reverend Harry Powell, a psychopathic killer passing himself off as a holy man, who marries a widowed woman in order to find the $10,000 her deceased bank robber husband hid.


However, her young son is suspicious of Powell’s motives and reluctant to give up any information: a deadly game of devilish cat and innocent mice ensues.

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