The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 thriller novel by American author Davis Grubb. The bestselling, National Book Award–finalist novel that inspired Charles Laughton’s expressionist horror classic starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery. The Night of the Hunter [1953] – The Night of the Hunter is best known as a film of 1955 by Charles Laughton, but it was first a great book by Davis Grubb, who based his story on a true case of serial killer Harry Powers, a deranged psychopath who preyed on and killed lonely widows in the late 1920s. Directed by Charles Laughton. The Night of the Hunter is nearly as demented as its lead villain, and I mean that as a compliment. It is imaginably chilling and disturbing. Probably Robert Mitchum's best-known performance was in this extremely creepy suspense-horror film … Following a script by James Agree, The Night of the Hunter follows nine-year-old John Harper (Billy Chapin) and his four-year-old sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), who are left fatherless when their Depression-weary pop, Ben (Peter Graves), robs a bank and kills two men in the process. Murderous ex-convict Harry Powell misrepresents himself as a prison chaplain upon his release from prison. Adapted by James Agee from a novel by Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter represented legendary actor Charles Laughton's only film directing effort. Starting out on the British stage in 1926, he had been acting in film since 1928 and came to Hollywood in the early '30s. The picture has become a cult classic since its release, and is widely regarded by film critics and historians and modern filmmakers as one of the most important pictures of the 1950s. A description of tropes appearing in Night of the Hunter. Plot Summary. A portly, homely man with very particular idiosyncrasies and affectations, he was … The book is based upon a true story of a frightening man who was hung for murdering two women and three children. Fast-forward to this week’s Criterion canonization of Laughton’s film. The Night of the Hunter is a classic Gothic fairytale: an evil being charms an unsuspecting parent, while only the children are aware that things are not what they seem.