went to a mystery screening tonight and when the opening credits started playing, i couldn't contain my excitement. this works on so many levels for so many reasons, even the occasional hokeyness adds a new layer to the sickly dark humor. but it's the cinematography and unusual directing that kicks this up a notch, and as a result, it transcends

this might be one of the best films ever made

"i can feel myself gettin' awful mad. i'm out of patience, children. i'm coming to find you now."

i love the expressionist style — the use of shadows makes everything scarier than it already is. it’s a damn shame that charles laughton never made another film because he is an insanely talented director. 

also has lemony snicket/daniel handler ever cited night of the hunter as an influence for a series of unfortunate events because the plot is like...the same.

I love when the deal with a guy is that he's the devil

A Southern Gothic masterpiece about the insidiousness of shame. 

(And with a narrative driven by a con man obsessed with money claiming moral authority who has issues with women... not at all timely.)

The year is 1955. I'm in a movie theater watching The Night of the Hunter. I keep shouting "WHAT INTERESTING BIRTHMARKS!" whenever Mitchum's LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos are shown. Eventually an usher tapes a popcorn tub to my face as a makeshift muzzle. The crowd cheers when he does this. The next time the knuckle tattoos are shown, I attempt to shout again. The popcorn tub doesn't really do anything to stop the noise. If anything it's a little louder now. Everyone groans. The usher wails in agony. And me? I'm simply enjoying the wonderful smell of popcorn. And hidden inside the popcorn tub, I'm smiling.

won't somebody please think of the children

“it's a hard world for little things”

i̲t̲’̲s̲ ̲a̲ ̲h̲a̲r̲d̲ ̲w̲o̲r̲l̲d̲ ̲f̲o̲r̲ ̲l̲i̲t̲t̲l̲e̲ ̲t̲h̲i̲n̲g̲s̲

Certainly amongst the best to ever grace the silver screens. A film so constricted in conflicting morality with biblical imagery and dark themes. It’s almost the base of humanity’s nature by folk knowledge blue print. I’ve never read the book but it’s really on my sights now. Especially since it’s based in the heart of west virginia 

First-time director Charles Laughton painted a broad picture with talent that filmmakers back in wish they had those skills. It’s really a damn shame that the reviews were indifferent back then. Because I’d love to have seen Laughton’s eyes on many other films. I’m just happy it’s gladly accepted nowadays as you can’t get any realer than a southern gothic tale back in the old days.

One of my unspoken rules here was that I wasn't going to give any movie a five-star rating on its first watch. It was really only a matter of time before I looked like an asshole on that one.

Admittedly, I am a sucker for stylized sets and expressionistic lighting and movies about bad people doing bad things. But apart from my personal tastes, The Night of the Hunter is filmmaking firing on all cylinders.

There's nothing new I can add to the discussion of this film, but I will say that I was fairly surprised at the turn it took in the third act revealing itself to be not (only) a noir thriller, but a classic fairy tale set in the real world.

. . . and that crazy sound design move when Mitchum yells at the kids was so cool it broke my brain.

Terrrrribly interesting film. It centres around a priest who marries a widow to get to her children, reminiscent of lolita, but it substitutes sexual abuse with monetary gain. Either way this is the behavior of a predator. Made in the 50s when there was undeniably sexual abuse going on in the church, this film feels like a clever way of hinting towards what was happening at the time but only what they could get away with saying about the subject.

holy fuck, this movie is so masterly made. not one moment felt out of place, and robert mitchum was truly horrifying as the preacher. wow

I like how people saw this lunatics tattoos and never thought anything was weird about him

There’s a case to be made for the porch scene being the greatest scene ever filmed, or at least my personal favorite. The singing, the struggle between Love and Hate, the ingenious use of the light on the porch screen...

I can forgive some shoddy child performances, nearly seventy years later this still feels as fresh and forward thinking as it ever has. A bona fide masterpiece.

someone please remind me to watch things that are good every once and a while

8'5/10
DVD

Oh boy yeah...

An absolute must watch, nothing compares 👀

bayağı güzeldi.. yönetmenin tek filmi olması üzdü

I couldn’t stop thinking about it since the day I watched it!

New rating 5/5

This had some truly awesome moments in it as the children try to avoid this crazy man while wandering the countryside. Sadly it all falls apart when they are adopted by the family and it becomes all about their integration into the new family unit.

Really deserving of its status in both the filmmaking (wow that underwater scene) and the performance, which Robert Mitchum really nails. The same can’t really be said for the story which starts off as a piping hot stance on a crook and murderous criminal using religion to serve his unrighteousness path but then turns into something sought to be more uplifting, in that true faith will save innocence. Maybe it tonally set itself up to have the darker ending, but even then as a whole, this was still a really good singular work by Charles Laughton.

Essentially a side scroller for long portions of its runtime

Gotta love the preacher popping a switchblade boner