SYNOPSIS: The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.
| Preacher Harry Powell | Robert Mitchum |
| Willa Harper | Shelley Winters |
| Miss Cooper | Lillian Gish |
| Uncle Birdie Steptoe | James Gleason |
| Icey Spoon | Evelyn Varden |
| Ben Harper | Peter Graves |
| Mr. Spoon | Don Beddoe |
| John Harper | Billy Chapin |
| Pearl Harper | Sally Jane Bruce |
| Ruby | Gloria Castillo |
| Director | Charles Laughton |
| From the novel by | Davis Grubb |
| Screenplay | James Agee |
| Music | Walter Schumann |
| Photography | Stanley Cortez |
| Art direction | Hilyard Brown |
| Editing | Robert Golden |
By November 18, 2010
In Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, terror and tenderness grapple with each other as profoundly as the words HATE and LOVE when they’re tattooed, one per hand, across Read more »
By November 16, 2010
The Night of the Hunter (1955)—the first film directed by Charles Laughton and also, sadly, the last—is among the greatest horror movies ever made, and perhaps, of that select company Read more »
By February 01, 1988
“It’s really a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale we are telling,” Charles Laughton has said of The Night of the Hunter. But, as anyone who has seen this extraordinary film knows, its maker’s Read more »
December 03, 2010
’Tis the season for DVD gift guides, and critic John Powers is quick out of the gate with a lineup of movie recommendations for NPR’s Fresh Air. Among his top choices are works by two great Charleses: Chaplin’s Read more »
November 10, 2010
In a new article for Slate, critic Elbert Ventura digs insightfully into what makes Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (coming to Criterion Blu-ray and DVD next week) the one-of-a-kind work Read more »
November 19, 2010
It’s easy to forget that audiences and critics were baffled by Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters, upon its release in 1955. Yet Read more »
