A monochrome masterpiece, pure cinematic alchemy and just about every other superlative that spells genius.
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09/24/07
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
98
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:41
Fresh:40
Rotten:1
Average Rating:8.7/10
Consensus: Featuring Robert Mitchum's formidable performance as child-hunting preacher, The Night of the Hunter is a disturbing look at good and evil.
Theatrical Release:02-04-1999
Synopsis: In this eerie meditation on good and evil, a schizophrenic preacher--possibly the devil himself--relentlessly hunts two small children across the Depression-era Bible Belt to get at their dead... [More]
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Peter Graves
Director: Charles Laughton
Reviews for The Night of the Hunter
Top CriticAn overlooked gem in the history of American film, this creepy curio incorporates elements of horror, noir, thriller and fairy tale.
09/24/07
Top CriticThere's the absolute authority of Mitchum's performance -- easy, charming, infinitely sinister.
01/26/06
Top CriticEasily ranks among the greatest American films.
12/14/01
Very disturbing.
11/11/02
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.
10/23/01
Any actor who wants to play a character with a touch of evil should study [Mitchum's] performance the way a rabbinical student studies the Torah.
10/03/01
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.
03/25/06
Top CriticThe Night of the Hunter (1955) is a truly compelling and terrifying classic masterpiece thriller, and the only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton
01/01/00
One of the most frightening of movies.
01/01/00
Top CriticA remarkably ambitious mix of realism and mysticism, terror and tenderness, stark tragedy and spiritual uplift.
11/06/01
Corny, yes; pretentious, sure; overwrought, definitely -- but every frame of it is thrilling.
04/21/07
Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter is the character actor's now-classic jab at godliness gone awry.
09/20/01
[Powell's] glibly superficial moralizing is epitomized by an infantile hand-play… [Gish's character] provides an undistorted counterpoint to Powell's diseased religiosity.
10/17/05
Laughton creates terrific tension between Mitchum and his prey, turning the preacher into a bloodthirsty wolf and Willa's children into tender lambs.
01/01/00
At once poetically beautiful and terrifying.
08/26/02
Ultimately the source of its style and power is mysterious -- it is a film without precedents, and without any real equals
08/28/07
As crude, direct, rattling, mystifying and exciting as American movies get.
03/08/02
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.
12/02/01
I can't think of another film that so deftly established that what you were watching inhabited the space between waking and dreaming.
10/20/02
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