The Frightening Thriller That Inspired Bruce Springsteen is Now Free to Stream
If you’ve seen Scott Cooper’s (Antlers, The Pale Blue Eye) musical biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, or if you’re a fan of Bruce Springsteen in general, then you already know the Boss found inspiration for his music in everything from Flannery O’Connor’s short stories to a script by Paul Schrader. But one of Springsteen’s most interesting influences comes in the form of Charles Laughton’s 1955 thriller, The Night of the Hunter, which haunts the film like a ghost through black-and-white flashbacks of the rock star as a little boy.
Once considered a commercial and critical flop, The Night of the Hunter has gained recognition as one of the greatest American films, featuring one of the scariest movie moments of all time. Watch it below.
Based on a novel by Davis Grub (which was based on actual events), The Night of the Hunter tells the story of “Reverend” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a serial killer in Depression-era West Virginia who marries young widows for their money before murdering them in the name of the Lord.
The first half of the film is a tense thriller with some of the most haunting imagery ever put to film, including an image of one of his victims strapped to a car in the bottom of a river, her arms pinned behind her back, her long blonde hair drifting with the seaweed. The second half plays out more like a dark fairy tale, following his victim’s children as they float down the stream to a little cottage far away, with Harry Powell following close behind like a hungry wolf.
Watch the trailer below:
In one of its most affecting scenes in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, a young Springsteen (Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr.) skips school to sit beside his abusive father, Douglas (Stephen Graham), in a darkened theater. It’s rare for his father to be kind and sober in the afternoon. Onscreen, Robert Mitchum’s “Reverend” Harry Powell preaches love and hate from his tattooed knuckles, a false prophet disguised as a pious family man. Springsteen curls his knees to his chest, his eyes wide open as he stares at the screen—terrified, transfixed, and perhaps recognizing something familiar.
Throughout the film, Springsteen has flashbacks of this moment. When he defends his mother by hitting Douglas with a baseball bat, we are reminded of the scene he watched in the theater of the children outsmarting Harry Powell in the basement.
Though The Night of the Hunter wasn’t the primary influence on Springsteen’s 1982 album, Nebraska (that honor goes to Terrence Malick’s Badlands), you can find it all over Springsteen’s work and his psyche in general. He’d reference Harry Powell’s tattoos in his song, “Cautious Man,” released five years after Nebraska: “On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear / And in which hand he held his fate was never clear.”
If you haven’t seen The Night of the Hunter yet, good news: it’s available to watch for free on Tubi and Amazon Prime with a subscription.
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