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Uploaded on: December 21, 2025

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Ontario Theatre 1700 Columbia Road NW, Washington, DC

Image source October 13 1955 - Courtesy David Ayers

The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American Southern Gothic horror-thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb. The plot is about Preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum), a serial killer who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.

The Night of the Hunter premiered on July 26, 1955, in Des Moines, Iowa, to negative reviews. It became the only directorial feature of Laughton.

Over the years, Night of the Hunter has been positively reevaluated and is considered one of the greatest films ever made and a defining film of the Southern Gothic genre.

It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1992. French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time, behind Citizen Kane.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -