---
title: "The Night of the Hunter"
year: 1955
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-night-of-the-hunter"
fi1m_id: "the-night-of-the-hunter"
imdb_id: "tt0048424"
tmdb_id: 3112
wikidata_id: "Q1132629"
fi1m_score: 91
critics_score: 86
critics_reviews: 18
published: "2026-09-18"
updated: "2026-09-19T08:48:13.345103+00:00"
region: "GB"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Directed by Charles Laughton · 1h 33m · BBFC 12 · Crime, Drama, Thriller

## Identity

The Night of the Hunter

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-night-of-the-hunter
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-night-of-the-hunter
- **IMDb ID:** tt0048424
- **TMDB ID:** 3112
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1132629
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048424/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/3112, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1132629

**Fi1m score: 91** · Critics 86 from 18 reviews

*In a sentence:* A preacher with LOVE and HATE on his knuckles, and the whole town cannot wait to shake his hand

> Charles Laughton’s only film as director is one of the strangest and best films fifties Hollywood made: a Depression fairy tale in black and white, with Robert Mitchum as a preacher we are still afraid of. The comedy is broad and the ending soft; neither matters.

## Synopsis

West Virginia, the Depression. Ben Harper (Peter Graves) robs a bank, kills two men and gets home with ten thousand dollars minutes ahead of the police. He hides the money and makes his children, John (Billy Chapin) and little Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), swear never to tell where it is, not even to their mother. In prison he shares a cell with Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a self-appointed preacher with LOVE tattooed on one hand and HATE on the other, who listens to Ben talk in his sleep. Ben is hanged. Powell comes to Cresap’s Landing in a clean black suit, charms the widow Willa (Shelley Winters) and the shopkeeper Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden), and sets about finding the money. Only John does not believe a word of it.

## Review

Charles Laughton directed one film and this is it. He was an actor, and it shows in how much he asks of the people in front of the camera and how little he seems to care what a director of 1955 was supposed to do. *The Night of the Hunter* is taken from Davis Grubb’s novel, adapted by James Agee and Laughton, and it is a fairy tale in the old sense: a wicked man in a black hat, two children with a secret, a river, and an old woman who does not scare. We think it is among the best films Hollywood made in that decade, and we would send a stranger to see it.

Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, who calls himself a preacher and has LOVE tattooed across the fingers of one hand and HATE across the other. Early on he puts the two fists together and wrestles them for the benefit of a small town, and the small town applauds. Mitchum does not hurry, does not raise his voice until he needs to, and sings a hymn, *Leaning on the Everlasting Arms*, in a warm baritone that turns the words sour. We were frightened of him, properly, in a way that seventy years of imitation have not blunted. What frightened us most was not the knife in his pocket but how quickly everyone around him hands over their trust.

Stanley Cortez shot it in black and white with almost nothing in between. Powell’s shadow falls across a child’s bedroom wall before he does. Willa’s bedroom is lit so that the sloping ceiling becomes the roof of a chapel and the bed an altar, and we knew from the light alone that this marriage would not be one. The town is a painted set under a painted sky and Laughton does not hide it; he wants it to look like the pictures in a storybook, because that is how a child would remember it. When the children take to the river in the second half, Cortez puts a frog, a spider’s web or an owl in the foreground, large as the boat, and the journey plays as something dreamed.

Walter Schumann’s score does a good deal of the storytelling. Powell’s hymn is his calling card, heard before he is seen, and the river gets a lullaby that Schumann hands to a child’s voice over the water. Robert Golden cuts between the children in the boat and the man on the bank so that we always know how far behind he is. Nobody involved seems to have asked whether an audience of 1955 would accept any of this. Most of them did not, and the film failed. It opened in Britain on 24 November 1955 and took decades to find the reputation it has now.

Shelley Winters plays Willa Harper, the widow Powell marries for the money her husband hid, and she does something brave with a small part: she lets Willa want to be punished. Lillian Gish opens the film, telling a Bible story to a ring of children against a sky full of stars, and returns late as Rachel Cooper, an old woman with no patience for a man in a good suit. Gish had been the face of silent cinema, and Laughton uses her as one, all eyes and set jaw. Billy Chapin, as John, carries the middle of the film on a face that has learned too early to give nothing away.

It is not without faults, and they are easy to name. Evelyn Varden and Don Beddoe, as the gossiping Spoons, play their scenes as farce, and the film lurches every time it visits their shop. Sally Jane Bruce, as Pearl, is a small child asked to hit marks, and sometimes she simply hits them. The last few minutes turn soft and start to tell us what we have been watching, which we had worked out. The New Yorker in 1955 found it arty, and we can see the scenes it meant. The reviews since have mostly been raves, and on this one we are with them.

At 93 minutes it wastes nothing, and the 12 certificate is fair: children watching will be frightened, which is the point, and there is nothing on screen they cannot be told about afterwards. Watch it with the lights off and the volume up for the hymn. We were humming it for a week afterwards, and we did not enjoy that.

*Fi1m score 91, published 18 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics agree, and the agreement runs deep. Nearly every review treats Charles Laughton’s only film as a director as a singular piece of American cinema, and the praise clusters in two places: Robert Mitchum’s preacher, described again and again as charming and chilling in the same breath, and Stanley Cortez’s black-and-white photography, with its hard shadows, silhouettes and, above all, the river sequence, which several reviews pick out as the passage that makes the film dreamlike rather than merely grim. Lillian Gish’s counterweight to Mitchum gets a quieter round of approval.

The reservations are few and mostly old. The one negative review, The New Yorker in 1955, finds the film uneven and heavy with allegory, while admiring the performances. The New York Times, the same week, thinks the story softens at the end. Sight and Sound is the only recent voice with a caveat, noting moments of broad comedy that hold it just short of the front rank. Otherwise the spread is narrow.

## Straight answers

**Is The Night of the Hunter worth watching?**

*The Night of the Hunter* is worth watching for almost anyone, and we scored it 91: a Depression fairy tale in black and white with Robert Mitchum as a preacher we are still afraid of. The comedy around the gossiping Spoons is broad and the last few minutes turn soft, but at 93 minutes it wastes nothing.

**How long is The Night of the Hunter, and what is it rated?**

*The Night of the Hunter* runs 1h 33m and is rated 12 by the BBFC in the UK. It is a crime and drama film.

**Where can I watch The Night of the Hunter in the UK?**

*The Night of the Hunter* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the UK, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from £3.49. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is The Night of the Hunter, and is it suitable for children?**

*The Night of the Hunter* carries a UK 12 certificate, and we think that is fair: it is frightening rather than graphic, with almost nothing shown that a child cannot be told about afterwards. Mitchum's preacher scares by his calm and his hymn, not by gore, so younger children may find him hard to shake, while teenagers should be fine.

**How does The Night of the Hunter compare to The Spirit of the Beehive?**

*The Night of the Hunter* is the more frightening and the more direct of the two, a storybook thriller with a villain at its centre, where [*The Spirit of the Beehive*](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive) is quiet, slow and told mostly in silence and firelight. Both see a haunted world through a child's eyes; we rate Laughton's film the higher, but Erice's rewards the patience it asks for.

**Is The Night of the Hunter based on a true story or a book?**

*The Night of the Hunter* is based on Davis Grubb's novel, adapted for the screen by James Agee and Charles Laughton; it is not a true story. The film plays it as a fairy tale in the old sense, a wicked man in a black hat and two children with a secret, and you need not know the book to follow or enjoy it.

**What should I watch after The Night of the Hunter?**

After *The Night of the Hunter*, try [*Cape Fear*](https://film.one/film/cape-fear-1962) (1962, Fi1m 82): Mitchum menaces another family, this time in daylight, and is no less patient about it. Then [*The Spirit of the Beehive*](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive) (1973, Fi1m 87): A Spanish child’s-eye view of a haunted countryside, told mostly in silence and firelight.

### Reviews we read (18)

- **Little White Lies**, Mark Asch (5/5/4): The critic calls it a welcome revival and one of classic cinema’s great uncategorisable outliers that returns triumphantly to the big screen. They single out its unique mix of Christian parable, folk tale and social concerns, along with the striking Carpenter Gothic visuals by Stanley Cortez and Lillian Gish’s performance. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-night-of-the-hunter-1955/)
- **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (5/5): The review hails the film as cutting a clear line between innocence and depravity in Charles Laughton’s sole directorial effort. It singles out Robert Mitchum’s performance as the heart of absolute darkness and the masterful black-and-white contrasts that make it the most haunted and dreamlike of American films. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-night-of-the-hunter)
- **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (A): The critic deems it the greatest directorial one-off in cinema history, praising its elemental power rooted in American conflicts of sin, violence, and good versus evil. Mitchum's dark charisma and Cortez's shadows create terror, while the river sequence offers poetic allure. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-night-of-the-hunter-1798166638)
- **Empire**, Adam Smith (90/100, inferred): The critic deems it one of the finest movies ever made, lauding Mitchum's magnetic performance as the preacher villain and the film's innovative direction and lyrical river sequence. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/night-hunter-2-review/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Dennis Lim (90/100, inferred): The review presents the film as a timeless masterpiece blending Expressionism, folk tale, and parable, noting its initial mixed reception and later acclaim. It singles out the child's-eye view and the contrast between Mitchum's villain and Gish's benevolence for praise. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-14-la-ca-second-look-20101114-story.html)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it one of the greatest American films, praising its expressionistic style, timeless quality, and unforgettable villain. He highlights the visual fantasy and Mitchum's iconic performance as elements that make it enduring despite its initial failure. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-night-of-the-hunter-1955)
- **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film one of the most twisted evocations of godliness gone awry. Laughton's delirious compositions evoke a Grimm landscape where love wars with hate, making it perhaps the best film about spiritual perseverance. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-night-of-the-hunter/)
- **The Guardian**, Mark Kermode (90/100, inferred): A restored version of Charles Laughton's sole directorial outing shows the movie has lost none of its haunting visual power. Unforgettably haunting images make this a perennially unsettling masterpiece. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/19/night-of-the-hunter-review-mark-kermode)
- **The Independent** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film one of the greatest American films, praising its lyrical strangeness, technical brilliance in photography, and status as a masterpiece despite its initial failure. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-also-showing-1084401.html)
- **The Telegraph** (90/100, inferred): The rereleased 1955 thriller still has the power to shock despite its flaws. It has grown in stature over the decades and is now regarded as a masterpiece of American cinema. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10579291/Night-of-the-Hunter-a-masterpiece-of-American-cinema.html)
- **Sight and Sound** (80/100, inferred): The piece celebrates Laughton’s beautiful and terrifying masterpiece as one of the strangest and finest films of 1950s Hollywood, with its expressionist style and nightmare atmosphere. It singles out Mitchum’s performance for praise while noting occasional broad-comedy moments that keep the film just short of the very greatest achievements. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/close-perfection-night-hunter)
- **Evening Standard** (70/100, inferred): The review highlights the re-release of Laughton's only film as a genuine film noir and intriguing cautionary melodrama, noting Mitchum's casting as the homicidal preacher. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/night-of-the-hunter-7434018.html)
- **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): The review describes the film as a weird and intriguing horror story with stark visuals and strong performances, especially Mitchum's chilling preacher. It notes that the story's toughness softens toward the end with a message about children enduring. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1955/09/30/archives/bogeyman-plus.html)
- **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film uneven, alternately artistic and arty, with too much allegory and heavy-handed contrasts. He praises the performances, especially Mitchum's, and notes it avoids usual movie banalities even if it ultimately fails. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1955/10/08/back-in-west-virginia)
- **HeyUGuys**, Stefan Pape (5/5): The critic praises the film's timeless themes of greed, faith, and manipulation, highlighting Robert Mitchum's chilling yet charismatic performance as the villainous preacher. They single out the effective use of shadows, silhouettes, and music for enhancing the horror elements. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-night-of-the-hunter-review/)
- **Polygon**, Oli Welsh (95/100, inferred): The critic hails the film as an extraordinary, visionary one-and-done masterpiece that blends horror, Southern Gothic, suspense, and dreamlike fable in a unique way. He singles out its unforgettable high-contrast black-and-white imagery, especially the river sequences and expressionistic shadows, as the element that makes it unrepeatable. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/the-night-of-the-hunter-horror-movie-classic-charles-laughton-one-and-done/)
- **Eye for Film**, Robert Munro (90/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a brilliant oddity and unsettling vision combining religious allegory, horror, fairytale, and noir, praising the haunting black and white photography and Mitchum's repulsive yet alluring villain performance. They note Lillian Gish's strong supporting role and lament that Laughton directed only this one film. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-night-of-the-hunter-1955-film-review-by-robert-munro)
- **Paste**, Jim Vorel (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a grim American fairy tale with ethereal cinematography that was misunderstood upon release but has since become an American classic. He singles out Robert Mitchum's icily seductive performance as the magnetic antagonist Rev. Harry Powell and the distinctive, dreamy visuals for particular acclaim. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/horror-movies/best-horror-movie-of-1955-night-of-the-hunter-robe)

## Details

- **Director:** Charles Laughton
- **Director:** Charles Laughton
- **Screenplay:** Charles Laughton, James Agee
- **Novel:** Davis Grubb
- **Cinematography:** Stanley Cortez
- **Editor:** Robert Golden
- **Music:** Walter Schumann
- **Producer:** Paul Gregory
- **Cast:** Robert Mitchum as Preacher Harry Powell; Shelley Winters as Willa Harper; Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper; Billy Chapin as John Harper; Sally Jane Bruce as Pearl Harper; James Gleason as Uncle Birdie Steptoe; Evelyn Varden as Icey Spoon; Don Beddoe as Walt Spoon
- **Runtime:** 1h 33m
- **Certificate (BBFC):** 12
- **Release (the UK):** 24 November 1955
- **Genres:** Crime, Drama, Thriller
- **Budget:** $795,000
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8dX6ZKJe2o

## Where to watch in the UK

- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- Amazon Prime Video: rent £3.49, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy £8.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-18.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, CA, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FR, GB, HR, IT, NL, NO, NZ, PT, RO, RS, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Cape Fear* (1962), Fi1m 82: Mitchum menaces another family, this time in daylight, and is no less patient about it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cape-fear-1962.md)
- *Whistle Down the Wind* (1961): Lancashire children mistake a fugitive for someone holier; the gentler English cousin of Laughton’s film.
- *The Spirit of the Beehive* (1973), Fi1m 87: A Spanish child’s-eye view of a haunted countryside, told mostly in silence and firelight. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive.md)
- *Nightmare Alley* (1947): A carnival con man learns to preach; the same American faith in a good voice.
- *The Reflecting Skin* (1990): Prairie Gothic through a boy’s eyes, with wheat fields shot like painted backdrops and real dread.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-night-of-the-hunter