The Night of the Hunter

Locations
Call Number: DVD Film-Noir Night
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD Film-Noir Night	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD Film-Noir Night	1-week checkout	Due 04-30-2024

Based on the novel by Davis Grubb.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1955 by United Artists.
Special features: Audio commentary ; Charles Laughton directs "The night of the hunter," a two-and-a-half-hour archival treasure trove of outtakes from the film ; new documentary ; clip for the Ed Sullivan show ; fifteen-minute episode of Moving pictures ; archival interview with Stanley Cortez ; gallery of sketches ; video conversation between Gitt and film critic Leonard Maltin ; original theatrical trailer ; booklet with essays by Terrence Rafferty and Michael Sragow.
Disc 1. The night of the hunter -- Disc 2. Charles Laughton directs.
Charles Laughton, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Agee.
A self-styled preacher marries and murders the widow of an executed convict with whom he once shared a cell. He then terrorizes her two young children to force them to tell him the whereabouts of the $10,000 he knows their father hid before his imprisonment.
DVD; widescreen, aspect ratio (1.66:1), monaural.
Contents: Night of the hunter.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Children.... children... submitted by irenzero on June 18, 2011, 10:25pm 'Love 'n hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands'
Death or Glory
The Clash

The enduring image from the 1955 Noir Thriller Night of the Hunter is that of the words "love" and "hate" tattooed across the knuckles of Robert Mitchum’s hands. The actor plays Reverend Harry Powell, a crook who smoothly fools the adults around him, but not the children. Too bad for him, because it is the children he is really after, especially John, the son of his former cellmate Ben Harper. John knows the location of $10,000 from his father’s last robbery, and Powell will stop at nothing to get his hands on the money.

Criterion Collection has just issued a new edition of The Night of the Hunter on DVD. The story is told with stunning images, and with an impending sense of danger and doom. Surreal sets and stylized use of shadows raise the film above the glut of "B" crime films from the era. The story moves at a good pace, and Mitchum provides what may be his best early performance. With a new digital transfer and a host of extra features, this is a classic that is well worth rediscovering.

pretty hardcore, for back in the day submitted by lisa on July 26, 2018, 4:37pm Shadowy, indeed.

intense noir submitted by kencza on July 9, 2020, 4:15pm Mitchum is a thoroughly scary and demented "man of the cloth" tracking down money he learned about in jail. He is a time bomb ready to go off during the whole film, and the tattoos on his fingers are a lasting image. Robert Mitchum is one of a handful of noir legends, and this performance is unforgettable. Nice job by Shelley Winters in this one too.

Did anybody take this seriously, EVEN back in the 50s when it came out? submitted by Tassos on November 26, 2021, 2:16pm If somebody made this movie today, it sure would look very different, even if some basic facts were the same.

Mitchum is partly good, but partly downright SILLY. Only a kindergarten kid would write "love' and 'hate' on the knuckles of his hands. At a minimum., to be taken seriously, shouldn't he at least have a legitimate TATOO of these words, along with graphics, somewhere else on his body?

THe dialogue is far from convincing. Most of the lame parts I had to fast forward or at least mute, so I would not hear the infantile dialogues.

PS irenzero: Why are you revealing the plot by giving a summary of the movie? DOn;t you know a summary is NOT a REVIEW? DO not even tell us what OTHERS think of this POS. Just tell us how YOU, not anybody else, liked it!