The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir thriller directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb. The plot involves a serial killer (Mitchum) who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.

Plot

Preacher Harry Powell is a misogynistic serial killer and self-proclaimed preacher traveling along the Ohio River in West Virginia during the Great Depression. He is arrested for driving a stolen car and serves 30 days at Moundsville Penitentiary. There he shares a cell with Ben Harper, who killed two men in a bank robbery for $10,000. Harper made his children, John and Pearl, promise to never reveal where he hid the money. Despite Powell's attempts to worm it out of him, Harper takes the secret to his grave when he is hanged for the murders.