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The Night of the Hunter (film)
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===Contemporaneous=== ''The Night of the Hunter'' was a failure with both audiences and critics at its initial release.<ref name=eiffel/> Laughton took the failure of his first film personally, and never attempted to make another film.{{sfn|Algar|1995|loc=13:55}} [[Bosley Crowther]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'' called the film "a weird and intriguing endeavor", adding: "unfortunately the story and the thesis presented by Mr. Grubb had to be carried through by Mr. Laughton to a finish—and it is here that he goes wrong. For the evolution of the melodrama, after the threatened, frightened children flee home, angles off into that allegorical contrast of the forces of Evil and Good."<ref>{{cite news|last=Crowther|first=Bosley|author-link=Bosley Crowther|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1955/09/30/archives/bogeyman-plus.html|title=Screen: Bogeyman Plus|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=September 30, 1955|access-date=January 30, 2018}}</ref> Gene Arneel of ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' summarized: "The relentless terror of Davis Grubb's novel got away from Paul Gregory and Charles Laughton in their translation of ''Night of the Hunter''. This start for Gregory as producer and Laughton as director is rich in promise but the completed product, bewitching at times, loses sustained drive via too many offbeat touches that have a misty effect."<ref>{{cite news|last=Arneel|first=Gene|url=https://archive.org/details/variety199-1955-07/page/n133/mode/2up|title=Film Reviews: The Night of the Hunter|work=Variety|page=6|date=July 20, 1955|access-date=June 10, 2021|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> ''[[Harrison's Reports]]'' wrote, "The picture might have some appeal for those who patronize art houses in search of the unusual in movie fare, but the great majority of those who see it will look upon it as a choppily-edited, foggy melodrama peopled with foggy characters."<ref>{{cite magazine|title='The Night of the Hunter' with Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish|url=https://archive.org/details/harrisonsreports37harr/page/n139/mode/2up|magazine=Harrison's Reports|page=120|date=July 23, 1955|access-date=June 10, 2021|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' summed up the film, "If sometimes it strains too hard at being simple and winds up being pretentious, it still is one of the year's most interesting and provocative films."<ref>{{cite magazine |title=A Diabolical Preacher Runs Amok |magazine=[[Life (magazine)|Life]] |page=49 |date=August 1, 1955 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xlYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49 |via=Google Books |access-date=February 8, 2020}}</ref> The [[Legion of Decency]] gave the film a B because it degraded marriage, and the Protestant Motion Picture Council rated it "objectionable", saying that any religious person would be offended by it. The film was also banned in [[Memphis, Tennessee]], by the city's head of censorship, [[Lloyd Binford]].{{sfn|Clubb|Rosas|2010|loc=35:55}}<ref name="afi" /> Great Britain rated the film "adults only."<ref name="afi" />
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