The Scare Salon

Since in my last movie review, I finally got around to seeing a classic horror film from the 1950s that I had previously and shamefully been sleeping on (Night of the Demon from 1957), I decided to continue along the same lines for this installment, taking in another film from the same decade that gets brought up a great deal in the horror community, but which I had—again—never gotten around to, much to my chagrin. This was the 1955 noir horror thriller The Night of the Hunter.

The film was based on the novel by Davis Grubb, which was in turn inspired by real-life, Dutch-born serial killer Harry Powers, a lonely-hearts-style murderer who lured widows into his web through newspaper advertisements in the 1920s and 1930s, then killed them and took their money. He’s believed to have murdered at least seven women in this way, and much like the fictional serial killer in The Night of the Hunter, he was eventually hanged (in Moundsville, West Virginia) for his crimes.

The film adaptation was helmed by legendary actor Charles Laughton, who aside from being married to the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester, had also previously directed several theater productions. The Night of the Hunter was his first film director’s credit, though, and unfortunately, it was also his last; critical and audience reaction to Hunter was so negative that Laughton vowed to never direct another picture.

The source of the problem seemed to be two-fold: on the one hand, religious audiences were very offended by the fact that the villain of the movie was a nominal preacher (even though it’s made fairly clear that he’s only posing as a man of the cloth). On the other hand, Laughton wanted the film to hearken back to the old days of silent film, and as such, the movie was much more stylized than audiences of the time were used to seeing; it definitely had an expressionistic flair to its visuals, was shot almost entirely on soundstages, and featured dialogue that was somewhat overdramatic and unrealistic. These factors apparently kept theatergoers well away, and contemporary critics also didn’t really seem to “get it.”

Time has been very kind to Hunter, however, and the film is now considered a stone-cold classic, appearing on numerous “greatest American films of the 20th century” lists. In fact, because of its (for the time) controversial subject matter and its unusual stylistic choices, the movie seems far less dated than other beloved films from the same era. As I was watching it, I admit I was honestly surprised at how much the movie got away with for the 1950s, especially in regards to very real threats perpetrated against children.

The story is set during the Great Depression, and the undercurrent of desperation and poverty is very apparent, adding effectively to the horror and tragedy of the main narrative. At the beginning of the film, we meet the antagonist of the piece, a traveling reverend by the name of Harry Powell, played with charismatic and sexually alluring menace by Robert Mitchum. We’re under no illusions that this is a very bad man; within the first five minutes, a group of boys find the body of a dead woman in a barn, and it’s revealed that Harry has killed her, stolen her money and a car, and beat cheeks for the next town. Iconically, Harry has the letters of “love” and “hate” tattooed on the knuckles of his right and left hands, respectively.

Harry gets arrested for the car theft (though not for the murder) and thrown in the clink for thirty days. While all of that is going on over here, over there we’re also following a family, the Harpers. Dad Ben (played by Peter Graves), hurting for cash and not wanting his two children to go hungry, unwisely robs a bank, and kills two men in the process. The cops are on his tail, but before he gets collared, he hides the ill-gotten ten grand, telling only his son John (Billy Chapin) where the loot is stashed. He makes John swear never to tell anyone, and to look after his younger sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), before he’s hauled away in cuffs.

Ben is sentenced to hang, but before his execution, he shares a cell with Harry Powell, who heard about the bank robbery and attempts to wangle the location of the money out of Ben. Ben ain’t talking, though he does mumble something about “a little child shall lead them” in his sleep one night. So Harry decides that after his release, he’s gonna just pop over and offer his “condolences” to Ben’s widow Willa (Shelley Winters) and hopefully find out where all that moolah might have gotten off to.

Harry Powell arrives in town, and immediately charms the dungarees off everyone with his rugged good looks and passionate religious speeches. Willa’s boss at the ice cream shop where she works, whose name is Icey and who is played by Evelyn Varden, is immediately taken with the mysterious reverend, and straight up encourages Willa to get in there and jump on that dick before one of the other women in town snaps it up. Willa can’t raise two kids on her own, the busybody Icey intones, and all but shoves Willa at the dangerous serial killer. Thanks for nothing, ya old bat.

The only person who isn’t fooled by Harry’s godly veneer, in fact, is young John, who immediately knows there’s something intensely sketchy about this motherfucker and correctly deduces that he’s only looking for the money his dad stole. Despite his obvious dislike for the man, though, his mom almost instantly marries him, a decision which will—spoiler alert—end up costing her life.

After Harry implies that Willa is a whore on their wedding night and tells her in no uncertain terms that they won’t be having sex ever because sex is only for procreation and she’s already had kids, the vulnerable and somewhat deluded Willa decides that God has told her that Harry married her in order to save her soul. She thus begins accompanying him on all his tent revivals, belittling her inferior female self and praising the Lawd along with the best of ’em.

Not long after this, though, she overhears Harry threatening her daughter Pearl to tell him where the money is, and though you’d think this would snap her out of her sad and bizarre fantasies, it almost seems to make her even more resigned to her fate. To wit, she basically just lays there in bed while Harry first smacks her across the face, then slashes her throat.

Harry then fastens the body to the family car and pushes the whole shebang into the river, afterward telling Icey and the other townsfolk that the wanton and faithless Willa just up and took off in the middle of the night. He lays the grief on so thick that it’s pretty obvious he’s bullshitting, but the clucking old biddies in town lap it right up.

Meanwhile, a local codger named Birdie Steptoe (James Gleason), who is also friends with John, sees Willa’s body at the bottom of the river while he’s out fishing. This visual is easily the creepiest of the movie, by the way; the camera lingers on Willa’s dead body, her hair and the river reeds gently undulating in the current. Though the effect was done with a mannequin, it’s realistic enough to be wonderfully unsettling.

Birdie, a nice man but also a drunk, is afraid to go to the police for fear he’ll get blamed for the murder, so instead he dives deep into a bottle while talking to a picture of his dead wife.

Meanwhile, John and Pearl are left alone with Harry Powell, who no one at all suspects of any wrongdoing. Harry threatens the children to tell him where the money is, and fearful that the preacher will hurt Pearl, John agrees to spill the beans. He lies, though; at this point, the audience has already been made aware that the money is stowed inside the stuffing of the doll Pearl has been lugging around the whole movie, but John says it’s under a stone in the basement. Once they’re down there, Harry attempts to slit John’s throat after he discovers the deception, but John is able to get the upper hand, dropping a heavy shelf on the reverend’s head before grabbing Pearl and running for their lives. They initially seek help at Birdie’s place, but he’s so hammered he’s completely useless, so they’re forced to come up with a plan B.

At this stage, the film changes gear a tad, as the kids take off in their dad’s johnboat with only the clothes on their backs and the money-filled doll. They drift down the river for a while, and after a short time, Harry stabs a gypsy, steals his horse, and starts to hunt for the wayward tykes.

The children eventually shore up at the home of a no-nonsense woman named Rachel Cooper, who is played by Lillian Gish (though the role was originally intended for Laughton’s wife Elsa Lanchester, who decided she didn’t want to be in the movie for whatever reason). Rachel takes in stray children, of which there are many during the Depression, and puts them to work picking peaches on her farm, while also lovingly caring for them.

John and Pearl are thankful to become the latest additions to her brood, but it doesn’t take long before Harry Powell tracks them down. He shows up at the house and claims to be the children’s father; Pearl runs right to him like a little traitor, but John’s reticence is all the evidence Rachel needs that this “preacher” is not to be trusted, and the heroic old broad runs his ass off with a shotgun.

Harry isn’t giving up that ten grand so easily, though, and menacingly parks himself outside the house all night, singing his signature hymn (“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”) and keeping everyone in the house awake. Rachel sits up all night, gun at the ready, but at one point, Harry seems to melt into the shadows and then suddenly appears at the door, busting into the house. To her credit, badass Rachel doesn’t hesitate to blast him, and though he isn’t killed, he’s wounded bad enough that he goes hightailing it to the barn, howling like a scalded cat. Rachel then calmly calls the cops, telling them that “something” is wounded in her barn, a line that legitimately made me laugh and cheer at the same time.

The authorities take Harry into custody, but because his arrest looks almost identical to the arrest of John’s father Ben at the beginning of the movie, the kid has something of a nervous breakdown, screaming for the police not to take him and beating the doll on the ground, scattering all the money.

At the ensuing trial, John is put on the stand, but can’t bring himself to testify against Harry, despite knowing for certain now that the man killed his mother (as well as possibly 25 other women). But I guess he went through a lot, so we should cut him some slack. His testimony was apparently unnecessary anyway, because Harry is sentenced to hang, and good riddance, though it appears at first that the townsfolk—led by a livid Icey—are gonna lynch the dude, as they march through the streets carrying torches and shrieking for blood like they’re chasing Frankenstein’s monster. But the crowd doesn’t get their pound of flesh, as it’s implied (though not shown) that Harry met his end at the behest of the hangman, all official-like.

The Night of the Hunter is really a standout film for the 1950s, not only in the exaggerated, throwback look of it, but also in the grim nature of its storyline. While I had a couple of small issues with it—such as the uneven acting performances of the kids, the short shrift given to the leadup to Harry and Willa’s marriage, and the bewildering overabundance of people singing hymns—it was definitely a compelling watch, with some beautifully eerie cinematography, genuine suspense, and the stellar performance of Robert Mitchum as the impossibly evil Harry Powell. The whole film, in fact, comes across as something of a very dark fairy tale, a tone I’m sure was deliberate on Charles Laughton’s part. Anyone with even a passing interest in genre cinema of the 1950s needs to give this a look if they haven’t seen it, since it’s become such a cultural touchstone and has been referenced and homaged in so many other media.

Incidentally, there was a TV-movie remake of The Night of the Hunter starring Richard Chamberlain in 1991, which I haven’t seen, and beginning in 2020, there have been rumors that Universal is planning a modern-era version, which I actually might be interested to see if it was done well. But as of this writing, the classic 1955 version is available to watch for free on Tubi, so get over there and check it out.

And until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.