A mysterious preacher rolls into an Ohio river town, his knuckles tattooed with “LOVE” and “HATE.” His inner psyche is just as conflicted as his opposing hands. Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) believes it is God’s will for him to murder naive young widows and steal their fortunes in order to spread the gospel across the land. Powell possesses a slick, seductive manner that easily wins over the mother of two young children who share a secret about their dead father’s hidden stolen money. The preacher easily destroys their mother, but the children become much tougher adversaries. Powell ends up chasing them down-river, through a nearly surreal fairy tale landscape. If the Reverend is their Big Bad Wolf, then Lillian Gish plays their Fairy Godmother, a kind-hearted woman who takes them in among her other collected orphans. Mitchum’s villain is a rancid prototype for countless filmic fiends to come (the relentless phantom preacher from Poltergeist II immediately comes to mind). His despicable portrayal of a misogynist, psychopathic preacher is as chilling as any movie monster. Many of Hunter’s scenes are haunting in their mix of horror and placid beauty, like the discovery of the dead mother calmly sitting at the bottom of a clear pond. The movie was a bomb in 1955, but stands as a classic today.

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