Number 147 on IMDb's Top 250
Ben Harper has committed murder for $10,000. He hides the money and makes daughter Pearl and son John promise not to tell anyone where it is hidden, not even their mother Willa. In prison and awaiting hanging, Ben meets his cellmate, the Preacher (Robert Mitchum), who tries unsuccessfully to get Ben to reveal where he stashed the money. When Preacher is released from prison he heads for the Harper home, intent on finding the money. Preacher charms Willa and wins her hand in marriage, only to kill her when she learns what he is really like. With only Pearl and John separating him from a small fortune, the Preacher unleashes the full force of his true, evil self. Hilarity ensues.
Trivia: Charles Laughton had no great love for children and so despised directing them in this film that Robert Mitchum found himself directing the children in several scenes. Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when Laughton described the character as "a diabolical shit." Mitchum promptly answered, "Present!" The sequence purportedly showing the preacher riding a horse in the distance was filmed in false perspective and was actually a midget astride a pony.
This was a pretty good movie. Mitchum was good as the evil Preacher. There are two famous scenes in this movie, Shelley Winters dead in the seat of a model T at the bottom of the river with her hair flowing in the current and Robert Mitchum's knuckles (as you can see in the cover art above). Preacher Harry Powell had H-A-T-E tattooed on him left hand and L-O-V-E tattooed on him right hand. This has been copied in a lot of different places including the Simpsons, but since the Simpsons characters only have three fingers, Side Show Bob had "L-U-V" and "H-A-T" with a macron over the middle 'A,' to get that 'long a' sound.
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