Night of the Hunter

(1955) ****

Another noir here, though this is a strange one, with equal parts melodrama and expressionism. It's the only movie ever directed by Charles Laughton

Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, an evil travelling preacher with LOVE and HATE tatooed on the fingers of each of his hands. He travels around finding widows to marry, rob, and then murder. After being thrown in jail for a different minor crime, he meets a guy on death row who talks in his sleep about the $10k he stole and hid. So when Powell gets out, he goes to the town, marries Shelley Winters the widow, and starts terrorizing her two young kids who know where the money is. The kids take off in an old skiff boat, and Reverend Harry goes after them on horseback. He eventually finds them taken in by Lilian Gish, playing the "good" Christian who takes in wayfaring children and defends them from evil.

If that sounds like some kind of morality play, it should, as this is clearly not a realistic slice of Southern life in any way. The characters are all intentionally overblown "types" that give this a fun weirdness that you'd more expect in a Coen Brothers or David Lynch flick. The elderly cafe owner lady (Shelley Winters' boss) is my favorite of these strange side characters--she goes from cliche spouting Southern busybody to torch wielding lynchmob instigator over the course of the film.

Mitchum's creepy Harry Powell is the center of the story--it's amazing to think how this nasty scripture-quoting preacher would have gone over in mid-50s America. No wonder this was a dud at the box office. Winters is also awesome as the nervous, sexually frustrated widow who buys his snake oil and ends up taking the stage at revivalist tent meetings.