I don't think this is as good a movie as it is now often made out to be and tend to agree with 1955 appraisals when it failed at the box office: a clearly ambitious but patchy first (and last) attempt at directing by Charles Laughton, full of shots at theatrical profundity - biblical stories, playbox sets, so many long quiet animal shots, pantomime, and nursery rhyme/fairy tale flourishes - awkwardly thrown in with a chilling serial killer story, an icy cold Robert Mitchum as the charlatan pastor, and a sense once it's over that it was all an elaborate but odd little affair.
★★★☆☆
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