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Licensor Information
MGM Home Entertainment
Directed by: Charles Laughton
Featuring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden, Peter Graves
The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.
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Release Information:
Technical Specifications
Format:
DVD
Discs:
DVD-9 (2 Discs)
Total: 2 Discs
Regions:
1 (DVD)
Aspect Ratio:
1.66:1
Audio Options:
English Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Resolution:
480p/29.97
Subtitles:
English
Supplements
Types of Supplements Included: Audio Commentary, Outtakes, Documentary, Interview, Television Program, Gallery, Theatrical Trailer, Booklet
- Audio commentary featuring second-unit director Terry Sanders, film critic F. X. Feeney, archivist Robert Gitt, and author Preston Neal Jones
- Charles Laughton Directs “The Night of the Hunter,” a two-and-a-half-hour treasure trove of outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage
- New documentary featuring interviews with producer Paul Gregory, Terry Sanders, F. X. Feeney, Preston Neal Jones, and author Jeffrey Couchman
- New video interview with Laughton biographer Simon Callow
- Clip from the The Ed Sullivan Show in which cast members perform a scene deleted from the film
- Fifteen-minute episode of the BBC show Moving Pictures about the film
- Archival interview with cinematographer Stanley Cortez
- Gallery of sketches by author Davis Grubb, author of the source novel
- New video conversation between Robert Gitt and film critic Leonard Maltin about Charles Laughton Directs
- Original theatrical trailer
- A booklet featuring new essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Michael Sragow
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Film
Picture
Audio
Supplements
Artwork
Release Credits
Artwork: Eric Skillman
Producer: Issa Clubb
Release Notes on Restoration
The Night of the Hunter
The Night of the Hunter is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. On standard 4:3 televisions, the image will appear letterboxed. On standard and widescreen televisions, black bars may also appear on the left and right to maintain the proper screen format. This new digital transfer was created in 2K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from the original 35mm camera negative. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker were manually removed using MTI’s DRS system and Pixel Farm’s PFClean system.
The monaural soundtrack was taken from the 2001 UCLA Film & Television Archive restoration, supervised by Robert Gitt and John Polito of Audio Mechanics. This restoration was painstakingly constructed from a 35mm composite master positive, a variable-density soundtrack negative of the film’s music and effects track, a projection print, and many rolls of 35mm magnetic film containing fully edited dialogue recordings. All of this audio was digitized at 96kHz, 24-bit by Simon Daniel and Peter Oreckcinto at DJ Audio in Studio City, CA. Additional restoration was performed by Criterion using Pro Tools HD.
The monaural soundtrack was taken from the 2001 UCLA Film & Television Archive restoration, supervised by Robert Gitt and John Polito of Audio Mechanics. This restoration was painstakingly constructed from a 35mm composite master positive, a variable-density soundtrack negative of the film’s music and effects track, a projection print, and many rolls of 35mm magnetic film containing fully edited dialogue recordings. All of this audio was digitized at 96kHz, 24-bit by Simon Daniel and Peter Oreckcinto at DJ Audio in Studio City, CA. Additional restoration was performed by Criterion using Pro Tools HD.