Review of The Night of the Hunter (1955) by Brandon S — 06 Mar 2016

When you watch a film directed by a Welles or a Hitchcock, you know that you're about to see a great film. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is a very different story. This is a first-time director, child actors, a scenery-chewing villain, pre-established source material, and a backwoods setting. In many cases throughout film history these elements have amounted to something strange or just downright repugnant. Not here. Here, the combined efforts of the great Charles Laughton, the great Robert Mitchum, and the great Stanley Cortez all add up to a film so good that it's difficult to compliment it without simply regurgitating what other, more qualified people have already said before.

Simply put, if you're an aspiring filmmaker looking to direct a thriller or a suspense tale, don't look to books or articles or pontification, but rather seek out two things as the models for how to properly tell a suspense story: the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the film (singular) of Charles Laughton. This is a film so dark and strange that the whole affair's overall mystery rivals even that of its own antagonist. See it.