The Night of the Hunter
Also known as Night of the Hunter
1955 film by Charles Laughton
Film · TMDB
7.9In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.
Released: 1955-07-2693 minDir: Charles LaughtonCrime, Drama, ThrillerBudget: $795,000
Cast
- Robert Mitchum as Preacher Harry Powell
- Shelley Winters as Willa Harper
- Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper
- Billy Chapin as John Harper
- Sally Jane Bruce as Pearl Harper
- James Gleason as Uncle Birdie Steptoe
Themes
- prison
~28 min read
Article
The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American Southern Gothic horror-thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel by Davis Grubb. The plot is about Preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum), a serial killer who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.
The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The film's lyrical and expressionistic style, borrowing techniques from silent film, sets it apart from other Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s, and it has influenced such later directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, and Guillermo del Toro.
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1950s Christmas films1950s crime thriller films1950s serial killer films1955 American films1955 directorial debut films1955 English-language films1955 filmsAmerican black-and-white filmsAmerican Christmas horror filmsAmerican crime thriller filmsAmerican serial killer filmsEnglish-language Christmas films