The Night of the Hunter (Paul Gregory; United Artists). Davis Grubb's tense 1954 novel about an itinerant psychopathic preacher is a natural for cinemelo-drama. Directed by Actor Charles Laughton, it is a garish, unbelievable but fairly exciting nightmare.
Robert Mitchum, the preacher, knows that somewhere around the small Ohio River valley house of Widow Shelley Winters he will find a $10,000 cache. Numskull Shelley, who does not believe the money is there, falls for Mitchum's hell fire because she thinks she will find a spark of romance behind it all. But Preacher Mitchum, who...