The Night of the Hunter is an American thriller directed in 1955 by Charles Laughton (his first and only directorial feature) and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. I streamed this from the Internet Archive site recently, and what a movie it is! Mitchum excels as creepy serial killer cum self-styled preacher-man Harry Powell who, whilst doing some bird, catches wind from Death Row convict Ben Harper about a hidden stash of money, somewhere in the family home of Harper’s wife and two young children.
Upon release from the penitentiary, Powell hightails it down to the small village in the Ohio River valley of West Virginia, where he inveigles himself into the community there. He uses his tattooed knuckles LOVE and HATE to tell religious parables and hide the fact that he’s a jailbird and a wrong ‘un. He also proceeds to woo and wed Harper’s widow Willa (Shelley Winters). Whilst Powell has won Willa’s and the town’s trust, who assume him to be a good and pious man, young John Harper, on the other hand, is instinctively suspicious of the newcomer. Nonetheless, under Powell’s probing John accidentally reveals that he and Pearl know where the money is hidden, although he determinedly sticks to his vow given to his father at their final meeting to never reveal the secret.
Powell’s patience runs thin and finally he murders Willa and dumps her body in the river, telling the town that she’s scarpered for a life of sin. With the mask well and truly off, the sinister Powell threatens the children into revealing that the money is hidden inside Pearl’s doll. The kids, however, manage to do a runner with the doll and flee downriver in their father’s small boat, finally finding sanctuary with Rachel Cooper, a tough woman with a heart of gold who looks after stray children but can handle a gun.
Powell eventually tracks them down, but Rachel sees through his deceptions and runs him off her property with a shotgun. Powell returns after dark and an all-night standoff ensues, during which the unflappable Rachel gives Powell a face full of birdshot. She summons the state police, who arrive and arrest Powell for Willa’s murder. John and Pearl spend their first Christmas together with Rachel and her brood of waifs and strays.
The Night of the Hunter premiered on July 26, 1955, in Des Moines, Iowa, but to largely negative reviews. Over the years, however, the film has been positively re-evaluated and is now considered one of the best films ever made. French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time, behind Citizen Kane. This modern trailer gives a good sense of the peril
