“It’s a hard world for little things…”
In The Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a con man posing as a traveling preacher who marries a widow to get at $10,000 her late husband hid with their two kids. The only person who sees through him is her 9-year-old son.
The movie was so controversial in 1955 that it nearly broke the Hays code, which barred showing a Christian minister as a villain. Producers got around it by making clear Powell was never actually ordained, just a man who figured out people would believe anything he said as long as he held a Bible.
It flopped when it came out, but seventy years later, Stephen King still calls it the scariest film ever made.
The creepiest stretch comes near the end: a nighttime standoff between Powell and a shotgun-toting widow, Rachel Cooper, who’s hiding the children on her farm. If you think you can’t be scared by a black and white movie, buckle up.
The Night of the Hunter (1955) is streaming free on Tubi.
