Movies

Night Of The Hunter

Adapted from David Grubb’s novel by critic James Agee (The African Queen), Laughton’s directorial debut and swan song about religion and the eternal battle of good versus evil is nothing short of a masterpiece. Whether dwelling on the silent film era inspired cinematography, basking in career defining performance by Mitchum and Winters, seeing child actors actually ACT, or getting lost in the southern charms of Walter Schumann’s score, Night Of The Hunter is truly a film that can be appreciated by everyone.

Published

13 years ago

November 21, 2010

David Harley

Often times, we think back to our childhood horror memories with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia as we remember our first viewings of staples like A Nightmare On Elm Street orHalloween. But, it’s those few odd ducks– ones that aren’t as mainstream – that really define our palate, and honestly, what would you rather talk about: Michael Myers, or how awesome you remember Chopping Mall being? Night Of The Hunter, while an all-time classic, is one of the more obscure films I picked up on when I was little, all thanks to – believe it or not – a book on horror movies that was at my elementary school’s library. Of course, watching the film at the tender age of ten (also procured from the same library), I had no grasp of the lyrical nature that occupied every frame of acclaimed actor Charles Laughton’s only turn in the director’s chair, nor did I have any idea how much of an influence D.W. Griffith had on the film, let alone who he was. The reason the it did stick with me, whether I realized it at the time or not, was that it’s a southern gothic horror film made from the childrens’ perspective and, in turn, makes it much more identifiable and terrifying to a kid; namely, me. Fifteen years later, it appeals to me on a different level, and that’s really the strength of the film; your perspective and appreciation of it changes with age, something many directors wish their feature could accomplish.

Almost as much childhood fable as it is horror, Night Of The Hunter tells the story of Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a preacher who sinisterly acts on behalf of God, doling out virtue and justice with H-A-T-E and L-O-V-E written on each knuckle. After showing a showgirl the error of her ways, he becomes cellmates with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who has stolen $10,000 and hid it somewhere that only his children know about. After Harper’s death sentence is carried out, Powell marries his widow Willa (Shelley Winters), intent on finding the hidden loot. Although John (Billy Chapin) sees through the preacher’s façade almost immediately, Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) eventually overlooks her need for a father figure and realizes the error of her ways. Unfortunately for their mother (and for the rest of the town), it’s too late; they’ve fallen under preacher’s pious spell, and Willa ends up sleeping with the fishes. Barely escaping his grasp, the children head down river on a rowboat, eventually taking up with a guardian angel of sorts, Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who is a foster mother to many.

Powell’s introduction to the children, which has him standing outside their house beside a lamp post, his hat’s shadow obscuring most of his face, is a frightening image, no doubt influencing the reveal of a Mr. Kruger in Tina’s dream some thirty years later, and, in fact, his entire persona. As the children float downriver, Stanley Cortez’s cinematography reveals a world that is out of proportion. Since it is seen from their perspective, animals are kept in the forefront of the shots, giving them a much larger size than John and Pearl. As they wake from an overnight stay in a barn, they awake to Powell’s silhouette in the distant sunrise, with John remarking, “Does he ever sleep?” Preacher’s character, much like pure evil, is ever present; he never sleeps, and never gives his victims a break, stopping only once he has accomplished his goal. He is, as many people have said over the years, a horrific version of Mother Goose.

This isn’t the first time Criterion has released Night Of The Hunter; while they were still releasing laserdiscs, the film carried a number twenty-eight on its spine. MGM’s DVD was sadly lacking, with no bonus features besides for the trailer, and a disappointing video and audio encode. Like Criterion’s laserdisc, it had a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, which is a shade different from the 1:66:1 one shown during its theatrical run. Luckily, Criterion’s presents the film with an all-new audio and video presentation in its original aspect ratio. The 2K digital transfer is beyond gorgeous, with excellent shadow contrasting – a “must” considering the film is nothing but – and grain is preserved with no noticeable DNR. The only problem is that during certain scenes (most notably, the aerial shot in the beginning of the film establishing the town), the difference in prints is extremely evident. Although UCLA created and supervised this transfer in 2001 with the most painstaking of efforts, it’s obvious that they compiled it from several different copies of the movie, some of which were not in as great of shape as others. The uncompressed mono soundtrack was taken from the same restoration, which was built from a 35 mm composite master positive and digitized at 96 kHz, 24-bit. Dialogue and sound effects are crisp and clear, while never overpowering Walter Schumann’s score. Aside from some minor hissing, it’s as close to perfect as you can get. Criterion has loaded the disc with its usual bevy of extras, complete with a twenty-eight page booklet with essays from Terrence Rafferty (Holy Terror) and Michael Sragow (Downriver And Heavenward With James Agee).

Special Features

Commentary – Recorded in 2008, this commentary features film critic F.X. Feeney, archivist Robert Gitt, second-unit director Terry Sanders, and author Preston Neal Jones (Heaven And Hell To Play With: The Filming Of “Night Of The Hunter”) in a round table discussion about the film, which they are extremely passionate about. Keeping the track lively by fielding discussion questions (both technical and trivia-based) to each other for the majority of its running time, they also look back on their first viewing of the film, and cover topics such as how the critical reaction to Laughton’s masterpiece has changed over time, the difference between the reality of the film’s situation and how the children perceive them, the themes and motifs, and what actors were up for which parts initially. If anything, it’ll leave you wondering what Laurence Olivier and Gary Cooper would’ve been like as Harry Powell.

The Making Of “The Night Of The Hunter” (37:59) – Featuring the four men on the commentary track, in addition to producer Paul Gregory and author Jeffrey Couchman (The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film) among others, the enthusiasts discuss the genesis – starting with the acquisition of David Grubb’s novel – and production of the film. Fans of D.W. Griffith should be pleased, as he’s discussed quite a bit since he was a key influence of the film’s visual presentation.

Simon Callow On Charles Laughton (10:35) – A new interview with Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor author Simon Callow, who discusses Laughton’s entire career, how Night Of The Hunter fits into it, and where his life went after his lone trip to the director’s chair.

Moving Pictures (14:18) – An episode of the BBC show Moving Pictures, which played before Night Of The Hunter’s 1995 broadcast. Serving as a brief introduction to the film and its key cast and crew members, the short documentary features interviews with Winters, Robert Mitchum, and Lillian Gish, as well as editor Robert Golden and many others. Though everyone reminisces about their experiences on the film, a big chunk of it focuses on their interactions with Laughton and his methods on-set.

The Ed Sullivan Show (03:52) – A clip from the show’s September 25th, 1955 episode, where Winters and Peter Graves perform a scene live, complete with a jail set, that never made it into the final film.

Stanley Cortez (12:54) – A profile piece on cinematographer Stanley Cortez that talks about his work on Night Of The Hunter and his relationship with Laughton. It’s a fine fluff piece, though I wish it would’ve focused on his contributions to the history of cinema overall; after all, he served as D.P. on Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, as well as films by other legendary directors like Samuel Fuller and Fritz Lang.

Davis Grubb Sketches – A gallery of drawings by David Grubb, who wrote the novel on which the film is based. They range from character sketches to storyboards, which were used by Laughton as such for certain scenes as is evident by the screenshot comparisons provided.

Introduction (16:59) – Film archivist Robert Gitt, whose fondness for the film is unmatched, discusses his feature-length documentary Charles Laughton Directs “The Night Of The Hunter” with famed critic Leonard Maltin. The footage, left in Laughton’s widow’s possession after he passed, was edited down from over eight hours to its current state, which premiered at the 2002 New York Film Festival and has been kept in the UCLA archive ever since, being shown only periodically.

Charles Laughton Directs “The Night Of The Hunter” (02:39:05) – Gitt’s assemblage of footage is a treasure trove of outtakes, thought to be long lost. The bulk of the documentary consists of Laughton directing off-camera, making way for lots of outtakes and raw footage. His relationship with Winters (which was rumored to be a troubled one) is explored through outtakes and rehearsals, and his approach to coaching the children is somewhat troubling (footage shows Laughton hitting Billy Chaplin in the stomach to make his anguish look that much more convincing). This is, without a doubt, one of the finest supplementals Criterion has ever released.

Film: 4.5/5

Blu-Ray: 5/5

Editorials

Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’

Published

13 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Mike Holtz

Pictured: 'Fallen'

Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.

At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.

MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)

This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.

But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.

I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.

Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”

In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.

CURE (1997)

Longlegs serial killer Cure

If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.

In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.

At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.

What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.

If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.

MANHUNTER (1986)

Longlegs serial killer manhunter

In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.

In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.

Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.

Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”

INSOMNIA (2002)

Insomnia Nolan

Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.

Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.

This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.

Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.

If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.

FALLEN (1998)

Longlegs serial killer fallen

Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.

In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.

Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!

Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.

Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.

Longlegs serial killer