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09/06/03
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
98
%
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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
No review available.
08/22/03
One of the most subversive pictures of the '50s
05/10/03
A juxtaposition of light and dark which can be as satisfying and inspirational as it is bleak and disturbing.
11/24/02
Very disturbing.
11/11/02
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
Classic film that just hasn't dated very well. Mitchum gives a tremendous performance, but the rest of the movie elements don't hold up so well.
09/27/02
Robert Mitchum is perfectly cast as the sinister reverend who's had 25 wives, done away with them all, and looking for the next widow that the good Lord will provide.
08/30/02
At once poetically beautiful and terrifying.
08/26/02
One of the most chilling suspense films ever made, it's also the finest role of Robert Mitchum.
03/21/02
As crude, direct, rattling, mystifying and exciting as American movies get.
03/08/02
Easily ranks among the greatest American films.
12/14/01
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
A remarkably ambitious mix of realism and mysticism, terror and tenderness, stark tragedy and spiritual uplift.
11/06/01
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
Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter is the character actor's now-classic jab at godliness gone awry.
09/20/01
If you hear cineastes discussing the film in hushed tones, it's only because Mitchum and Laughton have conspired to get under our skins and tattoo their story on our bones.
02/13/01
A unique, terrifying masterpiece.
01/01/00
Top CriticLaughton 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
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