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The Night of the Hunter

1955

Charles Laughton

Robert Mitchum, Billy Chapin, Sally Ann Bruce, Shelley Winters ...

8.1

32,174

Mystery. Drama. Film noir. Thriller A schizophrenic preacher (Robert Mitchum) - possibly the devil himself - relentlessly hunts two small children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) across the Depression-era Bible Belt to get at their dead fathers stolen fortune.

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"One of the greatest of all American films (...) Laughton made a film like no other before or since"	POS
United States	Michael Wilmington Chicago Tribune	"One of the great movie horror tales, with one of the greatest of all movie villains"	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"This suspense thriller is a stunning piece of work, with the shadows of German expressionism and a compositional sense comparable to the work of George Stevens (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	David Gritten Telegraph	"A masterpiece of American cinema (...) With its chilling performance from Robert Mitchum, still has the power to shock"	POS
United Kingdom	Adam Smith Empire	"Ignored for a long time, this film is now impossible to ignore. Mitchum is magnetic."	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"A clever and exceptionally effective job of catching the ugliness and terror of certain ignorant, small-town types (...) The toughness of the grain of the story goes soft and porous toward the end"	NEU
United States	Slate	"The irony is that it took a British director to give us the most magical filmed portrait of the dread and dream of the American pastoral."	POS
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"An enduring masterpiece—dark, deep, beautiful, aglow."	POS
United States	Chuck Bowen Slant	"[It] is so loaded with neurotic symbology that it can accommodate nearly any meaning any generation wishes to assign to it, and that's the source of its uneasy, primordial power (…) Rating: ★★★★½ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Tom Huddleston Time Out	"Laughton’s film makes the average film noir look like afterschool kids’ TV. Every shot is a masterclass in contrast, in looming blacks and piercing whites (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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