This film is as far away from the city as a fairy tale, "leaning on the everlasting Lord" with the awe and trust of country innocence. In The Night of the Hunter (set loosely in the thirties, in the back-roads mood of Ohio River country), we have stolen money and a demon preacher (Robert Mitchum) who comes after it, chasing two lost children towards the indomitably sturdy homestead of Lillian Gish. As much as it draws on Hans Christian Andersen, D.W. Griffith, and German expressionism, The Night of the Hunter knows an isolated state of the union (Amerikana) where the icons of the Western have survived by becoming grotesque. Harry Powell's chosen weapon is a knife. But with LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other, he is a twisted descendent of the Western's violent men of righteousness. In Charles Laughton's American masterpiece, that strain has driven Powell mad. The Night of the Hunter is all the more suggestive in arousing obsession in an actor (Mitchum) who had his own persona of laconic, stetson-shaded reliability.-David Thomson, from "After the Western," PFA '84