366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 170

The Date: March 18

The Movie: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

What Is It?: It’s a two-day Charles Laughton fest! And today he is behind the camera for the one and only time. His film in which Robert Mitchum plays a demonic, child-hunting preacher is appropriately unique... like watching the most beautiful and most terrifying dream come to life on screen. The riverboat escape sequence may be cinema’s single finest sequence.

Why Today?: On this day in 1932, Harry Powers, the real killer who inspired demonic preacher Harry Powell, is hing-hang-hunged.

Review: The Criterion edition of 'The Night of the Hunter'

In 1955, actor Charles Laughton directed his first and final film and Robert Mitchum embodied one of the cinema’s most relentless, frightening, and oddly humorous bogeymen. Mitchum is Harry Powell, a psychotic Big Bad Wolf in preacher’s clothing on the hunt for a pair of children who know the location of a cache of cash (and how relevant is that theme of a predatory priest today, kids?).