Night of the Hunter [VHS] Overview
In the entire history of American movies, The Night of the Hunter stands out as the rarest and most exotic of specimens. It is, to say the least, a masterpiece--and not just because it was the only movie directed by flamboyant actor Charles Laughton or the only produced solo screenplay by the legendary critic James Agee (who also cowrote The African Queen). The truth is, nobody has ever made anything approaching its phantasmagoric, overheated style in which German expressionism, religious hysteria, fairy-tale fantasy (of the Grimm-est variety), and stalker movie are brought together in a furious boil. Like a nightmarish premonition of stalker movies to come, Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a performance that prefigures his memorable villain in Cape Fear), who torments a boy and his little sister--even marries their mixed-up mother (Shelley Winters)--because he's certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images--the preacher's shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man's knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave--that they're still haunting audiences (and filmmakers) today. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
I saw this movie on TV when I was a child. I suspect that I had in my parents would take care has never been allowed to see him. My grandmother was a movie fan and had no objections to the distribution of TV to me. Since then I've probably seen this video at least 15 to 20 times and still scares me and leaves me open-mouthed as this is a fantastic film that a universal appeal in the sense that it bears the most primal fears, the majority of people.
The plot is fairlysimple. A man (the actor Peter Graves) robs a bank and is detected, without the ill-gotten money. He is sentenced to death and awaiting execution, while it is locked up with the latest scammer / con artist / thief probably less (actor Robert Mitchum). Mitchum tries to extract the location in the grip of Graves' no avail. Mitchum stands a haunted widow Graves' (Shelley Winters) and her two young children and is presented as a traveling minister. Mitchum courts and marries the widow. Hisabusive and the side faces of evil, and soon hinself quickly released by Winters, because he is convinced that children are the key to the location of hidden assets. The subsequent history is a game of cat and mouse between Mitchum and children who fled from Mitchum.
At first glance, the story is interesting and exciting. What distinguishes something much bigger are the strong performance of the actors, the moody black and white photography, contrasting elementsdirection of good versus evil, and Art of Charles Laughton in his unique attempt to film directing.
I recommend this film because of its uniqueness and its sensitivity, which contrasts markedly with respect to the protagonist Mitchum evil.
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