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The Night of the Hunter
Directed by
Charles Laughton
Not Rated
1955
1h 33m
Drama
,
Thriller
,
and more
8.0
93%
90%
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A self-proclaimed preacher marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real dad hid the $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.
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Cast of The Night of the Hunter
Robert Mitchum
Preacher Harry Powell
Billy Chapin
John Harper
Sally Jane Bruce
Pearl Harper
Shelley Winters
Willa Harper
Lillian Gish
Rachel Cooper
James Gleason
Uncle Birdie Steptoe
Evelyn Varden
Icey Spoon
Don Beddoe
Walt Spoon
Peter Graves
Ben Harper
James Griffith
District Attorney
Gloria Castillo
Ruby
Gloria Pall
Burlesque Dancer
Paul Bryar
Bart
Cheryl Callaway
Mary
Alexander Campbell
Judge
Michael Chapin
Ruby's Boyfriend
Roy Engel
Sheriff
Kay Lavelle
Miz Cunningham
Frances Morris
Bart's Wife
Rudy Germane
Townsman (uncredited)
The Night of the Hunter Ratings & Reviews
Varun
December 13, 2024
Starts off interesting but aimlessly meanders on to the end. The preacher villain is really scary and steals every scene but he doesn’t get to do much in the 2nd half of the movie, and it ends in the most lacklustre way. Some of the lines are great but most of the conversations feel rehearsed. The premise is also too simple. The cinematography is lovely, there’s some really nice framing and nature shots. Just through the personality of the preacher, there’s a good critique on Christianity if you have the eyes to see it, but most people of faith are just gonna go “The person is bad but the religion is good”. The movie had a couple of good elements but mostly it’s a bore.
Dallas Morning News
Jane Sumner
One of the most chilling suspense films ever made, it's also the finest role of Robert Mitchum.
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
One of the great movie horror tales, with one of the greatest of all movie villains.
Decent Films
Steven D. Greydanus
[Powell's] glibly superficial moralizing is epitomized by an infantile hand-play… [Gish's character] provides an undistorted counterpoint to Powell's diseased religiosity.
eye WEEKLY
Adam Nayman
In the pantheon of great screen villains, none is quite so despicable as Harry Powell, the heavy-lidded serial-killer-turned-preacher played by Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's classic thriller.
Slant Magazine
Ed Gonzalez
Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter is the character actor's now-classic jab at godliness gone awry.
Los Angeles Times
Philip K. Scheuer
It is doubtful that you will ever hear the old hymn, 'Learning,' again without recalling the gaunt, flapping figure of Preacher Powell as he lams it out in the dark night -- to the terror of the listening youngsters
Chicago Reader
Dave Kehr
Ultimately the source of its style and power is mysterious -- it is a film without precedents, and without any real equals
Variety
Variety Staff
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.
New York Times
Bosley Crowther
All this has been crisply compacted into clear screen drama by the late James Agee and it is put forth under the direction of Mr. Laughton in stark, rigid visual terms.
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Though purely homegrown, Hunter contains no social critique -- the issues are elemental, the morality biblical, the trials Homeric. In terms of cinematic texture, it's a hound from hell.
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
Laughton creates terrific tension between Mitchum and his prey, turning the preacher into a bloodthirsty wolf and Willa's children into tender lambs.
LarsenOnFilm
Josh Larsen
Mitchum is a dreamily terrifying presence, partly because he's filmed in menacing silhouette a good quarter of the time.
Parallax View
Sean Axmaker
... one of the most beautiful pastoral nightmares the cinema has seen.
ColeSmithey.com
Cole Smithey
[VIDEO ESSAY] Charles Laughton, a consummate British actor of stage and film, directed only one film during his lifetime, but he made it count.
Cinema Sight
Wesley Lovell
An astounding thriller with a chilling performance by Robert Mitchum.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
One of the most frightening of movies.
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Mitchum gives one of cinema's greatest performances as a demented man who's one part preacher, one part murderer, and totally determined to track down a stash of stolen loot in the possession of two kids.
Boulder Weekly
Michael J. Casey
It's a hard world for a little thing.
Antagony & Ecstasy
Tim Brayton
A magnificent example of a movie doing what movies do best: capturing emotions on film and presenting a feverish, imaginative state with the tactile quality of the real.
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