The Night of The Hunter

1955 - Dir Charles Laughton - 1 hour 32 minutes. Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st October, 2015

Oh, how the Americans hated this! A limey director, a maverick star and a horror film that was short of graphic horror… but still had the power to terrify. The studio didn’t know how to handle it. Somebody decided it should be publicised as a B movie shocker but that’s exactly what it wasn’t. It’s one of the cinema’s abiding tragedies that the directing career of one of our greatest actors was cut short by the bad handling of this, his one and only, directorial effort. Mr Laughton retired, mortified by the experience, not to the bottle (as popular myth would have it) but to the stage and radio. There’s no doubt that this is one of the strangest films ever to come out of Hollywood and we have to warn you that it’s not, even after all of these years, a comforting tale. Nobody who sees it ever forgets it - or the menace of Robert Mitchum’s performance… Take care on your walk home.. Children…