Movie: Night of the Hunter (spoilers)

I am very behind of my movie reviews. I may backfill some in a little while.

For now, though, this weeks' Netflix offering was the 1955 "Night of the Hunter".
This is a movie that seriously deserves to be remade. Any movie that has Lillian Gish kick someone's ass is worth watching. Even more so if it practically starts with a crazy guy saying to God "I know You don't mind the killin', Lord. Your book's full of killin'." But it was very much showing the time during which it was made.

For one, it could stand to have the story-telling method updated a bit. For example, there are sequences of scene after scene after scene where each scene consists of 2 or 3 lines of dialog and then it goes to the next scene. Let's fix that.

And maybe we could take out the "idiot" points. If you're going to hide a murder victim in a body of water, may I suggest you not chose the clearest body of water in 3 states? The one where you can see 50 feet straight down as though it were right in front of your face?
And if you happen to look into the clearest body of water in 3 states and see a murder victim just sitting there, go to the police. Just go.
(And to really add insult to injury, neither of these dumbs was necessary to the movie. They cancel out. You can completely take them out and not affect the movie one little bit.)

Oh, and let's not even pretend that the money's hiding place is a surprise to anyone, so just be honest about it up front. Honestly, the attempt at hiding it just mucks up a plot point.

Finally, I'd love to see this done with some child actors who can actually act. You know, since they have 80% of the camera time and all.

Despite that:
The character of Harry Powell is wonderful. I would love to see him played by a good actor, rather than just pointing the camera at Robert Mitchum and letting the melodrama spill out. I'm thinking do him as a more realistic sociopath/classic abuser. Start very charming, then kind of ramp up the abuse headfucking. And maybe we could suck the misogyny out of the rest of the movie and pile it all on him, because it really fits well there.

And maybe we could show the Harper's marriage as being abuse as well. It'd make Willow falling into Powell's trap more believable, I think. She's already primed to be beat down by someone and think it's her fault.

And the "bad religious person" versus "good religious person" thing at the end? Great job. I would file some of the rough edges off Ms. Cooper. Not make her saccharine, mind; there just seems to be a disconnect where she's very harsh sometimes, and utterly loving sometimes. Just keep the character a bit more consistent, or flesh out the seeming contradictions more (because people do have internal contradictions and faces they put on).

The original book may do it better, having more time to flesh things out. I don't know, although I am tempted to find a copy.

So, final conclusion. Good movie. Worth a watch. But, could benefit from the some technical updating.