The Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton

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4.75

The Night of the Hunter

Synopsis

In the Deep South, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

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Cast

Billy ChapinJohn Harper
Robert MitchumHarry Powell
Sally Jane BrucePearl Harper
Lillian GishRachel Cooper
Shelley WintersWilla Harper
James GleasonBirdie Steptoe
Evelyn VardenIcey Spoon
Peter GravesBen Harper
Don BeddoeWalt Spoon
Gloria CastilloRuby

Recommendations

100
Christian Science Monitor
This is the only film Laughton ever directed, and he packed it with a mixture of eerie chills, ingenious suspense, and absurdist humor. It's a genuine classic.
100
Village Voice
Laughton understood Agee's proximity to Grimm vaudeville, and fashioned the most intensely expressionistic movie of its day.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Part fairy tale and part bogeyman thriller -- a juicy allegory of evil, greed and innocence, told with an eerie visual poetry.
100
Chicago Sun-Times
One of the greatest of all American films, but has never received the attention it deserves because of its lack of the proper trappings. Many "great movies'' are by great directors, but Laughton directed only this one film, which was a critical and commercial failure long overshadowed by his acting career.
100
Chicago Reader
An enduring masterpiece--dark, deep, beautiful, aglow.
100
Empire
Ignored for a long time, this film is now impossible to ignore. Mitchum is magnetic.
100
Time Out London
It’s the most haunted and dreamlike of all American films, a gothic backwoods ramble with the Devil at its heels.
60
Variety
This start for Gregory as producer and Laughton as director is rich in promise but the completed product, bewitching at times, loses sustained drive via too many offbeat touches that have a misty effect.