Viewed: 30 May 2006
Directed by: Charles Laughton
Listed in: Movies, Library

I was always intrigued by the image of Robert Mitchum on the stairs, showing his "love" and "hate" tattoos. The psychotic preacher Harry Powell speaks directly to God, thanking him for leading the way to all those widows. After sharing a prison cell with a man on death row, He finds new prey of man's children, hiding a secret of wear $10,000 is hid. The film is a glorious chase through rural film noir West Virginia during the depression. After their mother is murdered the children are able to escape down the Ohio river, their trip filled with dream-like sequences lite by the full moon. They are able to find sanctuary with a kindly old spinster, who packs a shotgun when the children need defending. The Night of the Hunter feels like it was twenty years early, how could something this violent, intelligent and evil be made in mid-fifties America?