The Night of the Hunter: The 2010 Horror Movie Review

This has to be one of the greatest and most unique films in all American movie history. Unlike bare-bones editions of the past, the new DVD and Blu-Ray versions from Criterion offer us plenty to cheer about.

According to Criterion, the new transfer features:

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

- Audio commentary featuring assistant 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 archival treasure trove of outtakes from the film

- New documentary featuring interviews with producer Paul Gregory, Sanders, Jones, and author Jeffrey Couchman

- New video interview with Simon Callow, author of Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor

- Clip from the The Ed Sullivan Show, in which cast members perform live a scene that was 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

- New video conversation between Gitt and film critic Leonard Maltin about Charles Laughton Directs “The Night of the Hunter”

- Original theatrical trailer

PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Michael Sragow