Charles Laughton
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Filmography
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Undertow (2004)
Directed by David Gordon Green
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Themes Plot
The bad feeling over the gold coins comes to a head in an instant of violence, and the boys run away from home, entering a world that evokes " The Night of the Hunter " (1955).
This story of two brothers (Jamie Bell and Devon Alan) whose dreary, mud-slathered, peptic-ulcer–blighted existence in the swampy south is shattered by the arrival of a nasty uncle (Josh Lucas) seeking a stash of gold plays rather like The Night of the Hunter, by way of Badlands, by way of Macon County Line.
Their unwanted adventure turns into yet another kind of plot, a Southern gothic thriller haunted by The Night of the Hunter, impelled by their uncle's implacable greed and brutality, and quite a bit more generic than what's come before.
Filmmaker David Gordon Green merges the dreamlike qualities of his "All the Real Girls'' with gritty -- or more precisely, dirty -- family drama and "The Night of the Hunter'' thriller elements.
The most striking reference point for David Gordon Green's Undertow is Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
What begins as an homage to the Southern fried films of the ‘70s (almost anything with Burt Reynolds) soon turns into a family horror film, not unlike The Night of the Hunter (1955), but with a tone all its own.
Brimstone (2016)
Directed by Martin Koolhoven
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals Themes
It’s always good to see homage paid to “The Night of the Hunter,” one of the greatest of all American films, and Dutch writer-director Martin Koolhoven’s doom-laden Western does so in spades; some of the compositions and lines of dialogue (and not merely the scriptural ones), especially in the final reel, are obvious reminiscences.
With Pearce’s Dutch preacher, lanky form and Amish beard, he resembles a cross between a demonic Abraham Lincoln and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.
Certain strains of Good Book piousness are just an excuse for very bad behavior — ask Robert Mitchum’s itinerant man of God in “The Night of the Hunter,” an obvious antecedent.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Directed by Jane Campion
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Music Themes
And then there is his voice: guttural, growling, at times reminiscent of John Wayne and at others—especially when he softly whistles that piano tune to further torment Rose—recalling the menacing purr of Robert Mitchum as the false preacher in The Night of the Hunter.
Arguably an ensemble piece, especially considering the quartet of principles are each shouldering significant secrets which lends them an insular, cold aesthetic, it’s a poetic, sexually charged odyssey of menace in the vein of Faulkner and Laughton’s classic The Night of the Hunter (1955).
The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
Its closest relatives are Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter and Elia Kazan's Wild River , but shot through with the “gritty” vision of cruddy home life and bayou listlessness of Lance Hammer's Ballast .
One part "The Night of the Hunter," two parts "Huckleberry Finn," "Mud" may be born of the same rustic sensibility that fueled everyone from Andrew Wyeth to Terrence Malick, but Nichols expresses this outlook in a decidedly personal way.
Echoing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but also evoking the predatory menace of The Night of the Hunter and other books and films ( To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind) where children become immersed in an adult and dangerous world, Mud finds Matthew McConaughey at the top of his game.
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life ").
Megalopolis (2024)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals
The other, more intentional cinematic touchstones are common and occasionally evocative: a submerged woman's hair floats like poor Shelley Winters in The Night of the Hunter; the RKO Pictures logo is recreated in second-unit photography; and Plaza's fantastic performance as Wow takes on a German Expressionist twist as the silhouettes of her fingers literally push the men in her life in the directions she wants, reminiscent of a femme fatale Max Schreck.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Directed by Emerald Fennell
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Characters
Fennell’s inspirations are more macabre, utilizing a snippet of The Night of the Hunter (1955) as a prelude to Cassandra’s eventual climax.
Back at work the next day, Cassie – who lives with her clueless parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown, whose home décor is stuck in the ‘70s as they ironically watch The Night of the Hunter on TV) – serves a customer Ryan (Bo Burnham).
They definitely have no idea what Cassie gets up to in the evenings, their obliviousness underscored by a glibly amusing shot of them watching “The Night of the Hunter.”
In Charles Laughton’s, The Night of the Hunter, the film’s misogynistic serial killer protagonist, Rev. Harry Powell, says, “Not that you mind the killings.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Themes
The incursion of relentless evil on jus' folks' decency recalls Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter."
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Directed by Spike Lee
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals
A flop when released, it's only grown in stature and influence over the ensuing years — for starters, Spike Lee would pay homage to Powell's tattooed knuckles via the character of Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing.
The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Directed by Nicolas Pesce
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals
Pesce’s heartland Gothic visuals — specifically the very inky expanses of Zach Kuperstein’s glorious widescreen lensing — conjure spooked memories of Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter.”
Not so innocent is the leering home invader (Will Brill) who, in one terrifyingly framed interior shot, seems designed to bring back memories of Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955).
Shot, digitally, in beautifully composed black-and-white, this darkly comic feature about a young girl growing up in violent times is set on an isolated American farm that looks like it could be just down the road from where Charles Laughton’s classic and equally unclassifiable The Night of the Hunter was set.
The striking feature debut of music video director Nicolas Pesce is a poised and meticulously controlled slice of American gothic that blends together a slew of influences from Hitchcock to Haneke via David Lynch and The Night of the Hunter .
Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an accomplished transition from music videos with this darkly disturbing slice of American Gothic that wears its debts to Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) with quiet pride.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Plot
That the only person to divine the truth is an easily dismissed child creates a throat-tightening level of suspense, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1948).
Bones and All (2022)
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Characters
As Sully refers to himself in the third person as if it’s the only way to detach himself from the destruction he brings, Rylance injects insidious terror in the manner of Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter .
Both the script and the direction continually echo familiar literary and cinematic icons, from the family's name to the Shakespearean family plot to the prowling interloper (see Robert Mitchum in the 1950s classic The Night of the Hunter).
Lost River (2015)
Directed by Ryan Gosling
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals Characters
A derivative mish-mash of David Lynch, Harmony Korine and The Night of the Hunter, it’s presumably a labour of love, yet it doesn’t give you any sense of a personality or imagination behind the camera.
But even the most pitiless movie monsters – Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter , Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet – have an authentic emotional foundation.
Killer Joe presents an inversion of The Night of the Hunter, in which the interloping father—for his cop/killer, McConaughey has certainly studied the psychopath suavity of Robert Mitchum's preacher/killer—is actually welcomed by a family that knows no rule except might makes right.
This isn’t to say that the prime years McConaughey squandered shirtless in dire romantic comedies put him on equal footing with the iconic star of The Night Of The Hunter and Out Of The Past.
Nobody Knows (2004)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Themes
Nobody Knows instantly takes its place at the top of the heap of “children in peril” movies, right alongside The Night of the Hunter , Lord of the Flies , and The 400 Blows .
In true Coen fashion, a classic is repeatedly evoked: “The Night of the Hunter,” in the haunting rendition of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” on the soundtrack, the tableau of figures facing an unknown, tangible terror and the ways pockets and bursts of light illuminate the characters’ burdened faces.
As always, the Coens' support team help pull off the directors' ambitions, with Carter Burwell supplying a full-bodied reinterpretation of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" (the same hymn featured in "The Night of the Hunter") and Roger Deakins' widescreen lensing serving to de-romanticize the terrain and the characters themselves.
He was once a prisoner in Siberia, and has the tattoos to prove it; he even sports them on his knuckles, like Robert Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter.”
It recalls films like Sunrise and The Night of the Hunter , as well as European masters like Bresson, Fellini, and Antonioni.
It is hard to argue that Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell, the villainous Bible quoter in “The Night of the Hunter,” was possessed by sincere belief, or that Paul Bettany’s albino priest in “The Da Vinci Code” was an agent of divine beneficence.
One Battle After Another (2025)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Visuals
…it is closer to the grand lyricism, and seedy evil, of something like Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter as opposed to Mad Max or The Fugitive…