Psychopathic Preachers & Urban Crime

The Night of the Hunter

Robert Mitchum stars as a psychopathic preacher in hot pursuit of a treasure hidden by lynched bank robber, Ben Harper (Peter Graves). Only Harper's son, John (Billy Chapin), knows the whereabouts of the loot, and Mitchum kills, steals and lies in order to catch the child.

Director Charles Laughton develops a melodramatic tone with eerie background music by Walter Schumann. A sense of looming danger pervades the movie, as a dramatic victory of good over evil slowly unfolds. The Night of the Hunter, written in 1955, is the forerunner of the modern horror film, but this movie retains its tact while keeping up the intriguing suspense.

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3

This is a movie along the same lines as The French Connection--both of these seventies films turned a naked lens to the grime and sweaty heat of New York City. Here, the crime is not an international drug ring but something even more perfect for the Big Apple setting--a subway hijacking.

Four identically-dressed hijackers, each clad in a natty brown tweed jacket and tie and machine gun, control an entire train under the streets of New York. But the film's humor lies in the parallel it draws between the terror of being underground in the dark tunnels of the NYC subway system and the crowded madness of the everyday life above the streets.

Walter Matthau does not have to stretch too far to accurately portray a disheveled subway dispatcher--this is vintage Matthau: New York accent, stained shirts, mussed hair and bulbous nose dipping its way into everyone's business. As we follow Matthau's attempts to thwart the hijackers, the absolutely tangled insanity of this underground city, the subway, comes out.

Every frame of this movie contains a mixture of suspense and humor, and the wonderful final scene between Matthau and Martin Balsam is no exception.

The Night of the Hunter

Directed by Chris

Laughton; 94 minutes;

1955.

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3

Directed by Joseph Sargent, 100 minutes; 1973.