Cheap The Night of the Hunter (DVD) (Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters) (Charles Laughton) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Night of the Hunter

The storyline is quite simple; centered around the quest for the loot of a bank-robbery gone wrong, but the real high-point of this film is Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum's portrayal of a sexually frustrated, sadistic, murderous conman, that tries to uncover the whereabouts of 10.000 $ by presenting himself as a god-fearing preacher-man, is one of the most sinister and menacing displays of criminally insane, psychopatic behaviour ever captured on film.

Laughton's direction and Stanley Cortez's cinematography, especially in the underwater, where the dead body of Shelly Winters is found strapped to her car, and in the nightmare-ish, dream-like sequense, where Mitchum stalks the river-bound children, creates scenes that has forever etched themselves in my "movie-memory".

Laughton's directing-style seem influenced by german expressionists as Fritz Lang or Walter Ruttmann with his highly stylized use of film-techniques to underline Mitchum's darkened mental state and the general disturbed "feel" of this truly frightening film.

Deserves to be ranked with "Citizen Kane."
Charles Laughton, one of the greatest actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, made his directorial debut at age 56 with "Night of the Hunter." The film flopped so badly with critics and public that Laughton was never allowed to direct a movie again. It's hard to tell which is worse: the tragedy for the cinema, or the idiocy of the critics and the public. "Night of the Hunter" deserves to be ranked with "Citizen Kane" and the works of Pabst and Murnau among the great Expressionist film masterpieces. Its artiness probably meant it would never be a great popular success, but it deserves to be more than a cult favorite. Its combination of stark realism and extreme stylization, of magical beauty and Hitchcockian suspense, has never been replicated in any other movie. The performances are all superb and, in the cases of Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish, extraordinary. Mitchum pushes the envelope just enough as the evil preacher Harry Powell, giving a performance that might seem way over the top if a scene were taken out of context, but which masterfully evokes diabolical menace as a whole. As for Gish, she creates an unforgettable character in Rachel Cooper, whose prim, strict exterior barely conceals a combination of wisdom, backbone and moral splendor rarely found in the cinema. Shelley Winters is also very fine as a woman blinded by desire and guilt. Too little, I think, has been said of the supporting players in "Night of the Hunter." Billy Chapin is very touching as the little boy Powell menaces, but the standouts have to be Don Beddoe and Evelyn Varden as Walt and Icey Spoon, a sort of Richard and Hyacinth Bucket gone to seed. Icey is all idiot compliance with the loathsome Powell, taking his protestations of piety at face value while imagining herself the arbiter of morality and common sense. Walt, her henpecked husband, occasionally voices doubts but is quickly brought into line. So when Powell is revealed as the murderous monster he is, who leads the lynch mob? Why, Walt and Icey, of course! There are hundreds and hundreds of Walts and Iceys in small-town America. I know that firsthand.

Surreal Mitchum
I've always been a fan of Robert Mitchum's stoic style. But he's anything but stoic in this very unique film. The atmosphere created by Laughton's direction - and apparently his rewriting of the script - is as surreal as it gets. Once you realize you're watching an adult fairy tale about good and evil, you'll be mesmerized. This film is one artist's only offering, and worth the time to watch.