"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit..."

Classic Film Noir on Facebook comments on one of my favorite films, Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum:

Charles Laughton’s American film noir thriller ‘The Night of the Hunter’ (1955), followed a screenplay by James Agee that was adapted from the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb.

In the film, The Rev. Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) is, or poses as, a religious fanatic and serial killer who targets women to con, exploit, and kill. Serving time in prison for car theft, he meets condemned murderer Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who confesses to hiding $10,000 in stolen loot with his family. Released from jail, Powell is obsessed with finding the money, and he tracks down Harper's unsuspecting widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), and her two children, John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), and in a sinister manner conducts unspeakable deeds in an attempt to get his hands on that money.

The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese have all cited Charles Laughton’s ‘The Night of the Hunter’ as a film that has influenced their own work.

I read the book some time before I saw the film.

Frederick Cox, The Night of the Hunter, Facebook.