Night of the Hunter (1955)

Have you ever seen a movie in which someone had love, hate or some other four letter words tattooed on the knuckles of his/her hands? This may be the ur-text for hand tattooed loonies. Wasn’t this in Cape Fear or some such? The crazy preacher with a knife fetish and love/hate on his right/left is definitely one of the high points of this movie. Ditto for the singing duel between the old lady on the porch with the shotgun and the crazy preacher in the yard.

This movie was pretty thrilling as movies from the 50s go, I guess. It had some excellent characters and nice scenes but I wish someone with a sense of timing and suspense would remake it. Suspense is correlated significantly with building, progressive revelation, and less with laying all the cards on the table right at the first and then wait for various dei ex machinis in the form of slipping on jars and extremely slow chases up basement stairs to keep the action moving. Also this movie could stand to lose some of the ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’ nonsense. If I knew anything about making movies I could turn this into a first-rate modern thriller in my sleep.

Some notes for Night of the Hunter: Redux, in no particular order:
-keep the Depression era setting: desperation & religious revival
-keep the singing contest
-keep the ‘the money brought us together but now I am being holy blah blah blah’ speech/scene
-less boat
-way less boat
-less disembodied singing heads
-more crazy preaching/singing; especially the singing – the sound must be friendly and harmonious throughout but progressively be revealed as a siren’s song
-don’t tip the hand fully on the crazy too early: we should still be wondering ca. minute 45 what exactly the preacher’s deal is
-lose one of the two children, possibly the boy and make the girl 11-14; make the remaining child likeable (but rebellious – no HJOsment pls – so that the townspeople are incredulous when s/he starts badmouthing the preacher
-more different townspeople: apparently their home only has 7 residents (two nosy shop keepers, bank robber husband, wife, boy child, girl child, town drunk/boat repairman)
-less hamming, more menacing
-ditch the orphans but keep the perceptive old lady: possibly expand her contest of wills with the preacher: possibly some kind of multi-episode struggle between the old spinster who can see through the preacher and the preacher who knows that the old spinster can see through him and knows also that she knows that he knows, etc. For the hearts and souls of townspeople in town #2.
-don’t make the preacher a charlatan, just crazy, a real believer
-clarify what is up with the lynch mob: I like the rule of law but this theme/subplot didn’t track for me. Why did the nosy neighbors wind up leading the lynch mob?