No subtlety here. Robert Mitchum plays a phony minister who has gotten wind of a stolen fortune from a condemned man in prison. The movie then launches into a obsessed assault on two children who know where the money is. He is one of the most complex villains in the history of the cinema. He is totally in control of every scene. Everyone buys into his gig and he uses religion to get what he wants. The young boy knows what the man is and protects his sister (a major task because she is totally clueless and innocent). When Mitchum kills the children's mother, slashing her throat shortly after their marriage, the kids take off down the river. The story is allegorical as the two try to find their way to freedom. Mitchum doesn't give up, but meets his match in Lillian Gish, who has taken the kids in. One of my favorite things about this movie is the strange screams that emanate from Mitchum when he is frustrated or in danger. He is so cocky and quirky that it's hard to imagine anyone falling for his hoo haw. See this for the incredible camera work especially. Some of the finest scenes in black and white cinematography are present here, particularly the use of shadows.

Extraordinary, unparalleled, breathtaking ... that's how I would appraise the film's visuals, from DP Stanley Cortez. The images are all in B&W, and many have a noir design straight out of German Expressionism. Sharp angles, high-contrast "hard" lighting, and deep shadows amplify form, or rather distort reality, and as such project human experience as an exaggeration of the emotional.

Some of the images in "The Night Of The Hunter" are so enthralling that they will live on in the collective mind as long as cinema exists. Who can forget that famous underwater scene wherein a dead woman's body sits upright in a car with her hair flowing along the current like seaweed, accompanied by background music that is so dreamlike? One of my favorite images is the one wherein Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) lies in blissful repose on a bed as Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) stands by a window in an unadorned room with angular walls that slope upward, as if in a church.

One of the most haunting, and famous, sequences has the two children, John and Pearl, in a rowboat, as they make a Homeric odyssey down a river, lorded over by giant spider webs, frogs, and rabbits. And then there's that electrifying scene with Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) in silhouette, sitting in a chair, holding a shotgun, as Harry Powell sings "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms". Cinematic brilliance extraordinaire!

Consistent with its expressionistic visuals, the story is presented from the POV of a child's nightmare. John and Pearl symbolize innocence, and the bogeyman comes in the form of an adult, a godlike man who cons the gullible townsfolk including the children's mom. Our good reverend Powell is less interested in saving souls than he is in finding all that loot stashed away somewhere. Thus, the film's underlying theme is at least as relevant now as it was fifty years ago; the film has not aged one bit.

Production design is sparse, true to the film's visual style and to the setting in Depression era West Virginia. The casting is perfect. Robert Mitchum has just the right look and voice for the part of Harry Powell. I like how he calls to John and Pearl ... "chill-drenn?" Lillian Gish is well-suited to represent ... reality.

And those two kids likewise are ideally cast. Love the way Pearl, with her round face and those rag-a-muffin curls refers to herself, in that Southern drawl, as "Pell". And the film's horror combines with humor in many scenes, one of which has "Pell" sitting on the ground with scissors in hand nonchalantly cutting up paper currency into paper dolls.

Acting is generally exaggerated, again consistent with what one would expect in a nightmare. Evelyn Varden, as Icey Spoon (love that name),hams it up in a gossipy, mother hen sort of way. And Shelley Winters effectively jitters her way through the film, ghostlike, her character lost in delusion.

The film's original score is haunting and mournful, and could hardly set a more appropriate tone: "Dream little one, dream; dream my little one, dream; oh the hunter in the night fills your childish heart with fright; fear is only a dream; so little one dream".

With its brilliant photography, its unpopular but deeply truthful theme, and its nightmarish story, Charles Laughton's "The Night Of The Hunter" is high up on my list of twenty best films of all time.

I give Robert Mitchum's performance a 10. Every part of the film with him in it is perfect (or nearly so). The problem is that despite this, the film really bogs down when the plot centers only on the children or their rescuer (Lillian Gish). At times, Gish is GREAT as a spunky old woman determined to defeat the embodiment of evil in Mitchum, while at other times her role is just too syrupy and heavy-handed. It's as if there were two films (one great and one poor) grafted together. The moments of action and suspense are great while the moralistic and preachy dialog later in the film serves to reduce the film's impact. I would have much preferred the film if it were more heartless and film noir in its sensibilities.