A murderous priest learns that his cellmate in prison committed a robbery in which the money was never found. When he is released from prison he sets out to find the robber's widow, and her two children, and to get his hands on the money. Soon, the children who have it on their possession, find themselves on the run from the never tiring patient pursuit of the evil man.
If John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) counts as a horror movie, then Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955) is most certainly one. Filled with gorgeous, haunting, and dreamlike imagery, the story is told from the perspective of the two children as they are pursued by this sinister, seemingly unstoppable, bogeyman in the form a very disturbing Robert Mitchum. Mitchum's character has all of the adults believing he is a generous, kind-hearted, man of God, while only the children know better. The film has a real fairytale quality to it.
This is a gorgeous masterpiece and it's a shame that Laughton never directed another movie after this.
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