Response #4 - Night of the Hunter: Could you be more obvious?

            After so many of the same horror movie plots being retold, watching The Night of the Hunter was pretty bold in the characters they were trying to use. Harry Powell is just this overly charismatic serial killer who believes he can talk to God and that God points out the widows that he needs to kill. Robert Mitchum, who plays the killer, is giving the character a silent movie, over the top persona almost the whole movie. To a trained audience, it’s obvious that he is this messed up serial killer with a lot of demons in his closet. He spends most of the movie over acting in his role. This makes it so frustrating when the townspeople and the widow, Willa Harper, become so infatuated with him and believe him to be so divine. The charisma takes over and makes the people love him so much. The scene at the town picnic is just so purely American picnic, where the mysterious preacher is all the rage. The recently widowed woman is the easy target and her relationship with this strange man is highly encouraged by the town. It seems played out as a movie style, I think even for its own time.

            Interesting aspects about this movie also are the genre swapping as the movie progresses. The move from classic serial killer horror to during the preachers attack of the Coopers house to the Frankensteinian lynch mob scene, where the towns people are so moved so quickly to violence over a man they fully supported as innocent. Then that ending with the Christmas scene and the presents which comes out of now where. It can easily be interpreted as almost commercial in nature just bringing up the importance of traditional Christmas in the lives of children. Very strange. It’s also somehow at the same time using biblical references to drive a lot of the dialogue towards the end. The ploy of the positive interpretation of the bible through the character of Mrs. Cooper can be seen as the side of good. The preacher uses that same bible and God to justify his hate and drive for murder, taking on the mantle of the evil character. Basically using the ideas of the devil’s temptation and the righteousness of God being in conflict to drive the ultimate conflict in the movie when Cooper shoot Powell.

            The ultimate obvious throwback to early silent movie genre is the complete ridiculousness of the line said by Powell. “I’ll be back! When it’s dark!” Like of course you will be back when its dark. You’re the bad guy! You can also easily see how if the filmmakers had been doing a silent film that some creepy music would have played while he reared up on his horse and he mouthed some words, then we would be treated to a word card with that line on it. He doesn’t even need to say it. Of course he will be back to finish the job.

            A gendered aspect of this movie is that all the women fall in love with this preacher right away while the grown men and little John do not trust him at all. I am not saying the director made this move on purpose but it seems noteworthy to point out. If the preacher represents the temptation of the devil then is the bible throwback even more obvious? Eve getting tempted into eating the forbidden fruit and then also getting Adam to try it thereby creating sin, is eerily similar to how the gender dynamics play out in The Night of the Hunter.