1955 / Charles Laughton > After Robert Mitchum’s turn as the dashing anti-hero in Out of the Past, I found it refreshing to see his portrayal of a so-called holy man with a batshit crazy mind. The man gives you the creeps in The Night of the Hunter, with his wild religious rhetoric and instantly suspicious demeanor. What tricks me is that I can’t figure out what Laughton was up to. The film’s hard to figure out because it’s not simply a good vs. bad story, as it has shades of a fable and a darkly Biblical undertone. But all that withstanding, everything simply falls apart at the end. Symbolically and fundamentally, it becomes a jumbled mess. Sure, it’s possible to justify everything that happens, but it just doesn’t feel acceptable to a rational mind. Either way, one thing is for sure: This has some of the finest cinematography I’ve ever seen in a black & white film. Stanley Cortez uses beautiful, stark angles and really captures the depth of what one can do without color.