After 70 years, twisted gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter remains as disturbing and beguiling as ever

After 70 years, twisted gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter remains as disturbing and beguiling as ever

United Artists/Getty ImagesIn 1955, director Charles Laughton crafted one of the darkest, strangest fairytales ever to come out of Hollywood. The Night of the Hunter remains visually exquisite and profoundly unsettling. Shortly before Ben Harper is hanged for robbing a bank and killing two men, he hides the $10,000 loot in the toy doll of his young daughter Pearl. Only Pearl and her brother John know the secret – until the deranged serial killer…

A child’s demon: Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter

The magic of Charles Laughton's Southern gothic one-off may be in Mitchum's willing flamboyance, argued David Thomson in our April 1999 issue