Tag Archives: Robert Mitchum

Charles Laughton’s The Night Of The Hunter (1955)

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

Robert Mitchum