The Night of the Hunter is the only film Charles Laughton ever directed. Made in 1955, the film remains as haunting and effective as any modern horror movie. There a few comparable cinematic experiences to The Night of the Hunter and its beautifully rendered nightmare Preacher hunting orphaned children.

The first thing one notices in The Night of the Hunter is the distinct visual aesthetic Laughton adopts. Existing in the director’s creative landscape between the reality of the simple American life and the horrors of a Grimm fairy tale, Laughton builds a story of shadows and sharp angles around Robert Mitchum’s rock-edged jawline and the soft faces of the children he pursues. The director adopts with pleasure the stylized performance and heavy shadows of German Expressionism and gleefully mixes his stunning imagery with a horrific story.

That story is of a serial-killing preacher, Harry Powell and the widow that he woos (Shelley Winters). Seeking her own salvation, the widow marries the man of God, unaware of his real motives, to find money that was stolen and buried by her late husband. Believing that her son knows where the money can be found, the smooth preaching Powell, tattooed with LOVE and HATE upon his knuckles, reaches out to children, and eventually the boy directly, to discover his secret. But the children, suspicious of the stranger, do not trust him.

Soon, neither does their mother. Realizing that he has been discovered, Reverend Powell murders his wife and dumps her body in the river. The children flee, the Reverend pursues them, and The Night of the Hunter becomes a surrealist portrait of a nightmare river-chase.

To this day, the Reverend Powell remains one of cinemas best and most terrifying villains. Mitchum’s performance is at times subtle and smooth, and at others outrageous, comical, and subhuman. It must be seen by anyone who loves movies.

The Night of the Hunter left a mark like few other films. A failure upon it’s release, the true impact of The Night of the Hunter took time to find momentum. Though Laughton never made another movie, The Night of the Hunter has earned him accolades as one of our best and most original directors. So little has been made like The Night of the Hunter, before or since, and yet so much of the film will seem recognizable to modern audiences, that Laughton’s unique contribution to the American horror genre remains as powerful, and terrifying, as it was 60 years ago. It is beautiful, horrible, and altogether surreal.

Previously, in Beyond Horror: Ingmar Bergman’s Disintegration Quartet