ROBERT MITCHUM is the bad guy in "Night of the Hunter."
BOB LEBZELTER / VIDEO VIPER /
Published May 27, 2009 03:15 pm - VIDEO VIPER for WEEKENDER, May 29, 2009
‘Night of the Hunter’ scary, suspenseful Video Viper / ROBERT LEBZELTER
Star Beacon
Charles Laughton had a vast career in film.
He was Quasimodo in “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Paradine Case.”
He was Capt. Bligh in “Mutiny on the Bounty.”
He was also a film director, well, for one film. It is called "Night of the Hunter."
It was greeted so poorly my critics, he never attempted to direct again, although thankfully he continued to make movies, his last being Otto Preminger’s “Advise and Consent,” which also starred Henry Fonda.
But I am here to tell you “Night of the Hunter” needs to be revisited.
It is a genuinely chilling picture, subtle, dark, scary, full of tension.
Laughton did everything right. Maybe the film wasn't right for 1955, but it would be for 2009.
It's a film essentially about children and their wisdom, which transcends that of adults.
The film opens with playing children coming across the body of a girl.
The scene switches to two children playing, their bleeding father staggering into the yard. Played by Peter Graves, who later starred in “Mission Impossible,” he orders his son, played by Billy Chapin, to hide money he has from a robbery. You can hear the sirens in the background.
The Graves character makes the boy and his young sister swear they will never tell where the money is hidden.
The Graves character goes to his death, but not before telling an apparent minister and fellow inmate in the prison, played by Robert Mitchum, about his haul.
Mitchum knows the mechanics of being a pious parson. He quotes scripture. But it is easy to see the man is pure evil. Mitchum's character, Harry Powell, is soon released for his auto-theft offense and heads to Graves’ character’s family.
There he meets the widow, played by a young Shelley Winters. Winters’ character is duped by the saintly sounding sadist, but the young boy isn't.
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