Not impressed
(NOTE: Updated 29 July 2014)
Not impressed at all, given all the hype and high praise about this film. My expectations were not met at all. I'm a film buff, the one that barely stomach a 2000s slasher but is bonkers about the early Universal Horror films. There's some directors I really look up to with high regard: Jack Clayton, Robert Wise, Alfred Hitchcock, Terrence Fisher, Robert Aldrich, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, James Whale, Tod Browning, etc. The Hammer films have a very special place in my heart. My childhood nightmares included the silent John Barrymore as Jekyll/Hyde and Max Schreck as Orlok.
This film sure receives a lot of commend and I'm pretty much feeling like I'm rivaling the world, but it's my opinion and my right to voice it.
Robert Mitchum, sorry to say, I found him to be blatantly and laughably overacting. His is one of the hammier performances I've ever seen, and I mean it in a bad way (and not in a good way like the great Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood). Not only was he extremely irritating to watch, his character didn't feel like a villain at all. At least not a villain in the vein of such a film. He was more like a caricature of a villain, the ones found in Looney Tunes cartoons. I've seen him in Cape Fear and he was much, much superior in that role. I can’t comprehend people claiming that the Preacher is his best performance (well, I guess it’s their opinion, too). I can picture many other actors who could do justice to the character and amplify the scary factor such a character is supposed to convey (eg Ray Milland, Charles Boyer, Vincent Price himself, Henry Daniell, etc).
Apart from Lillian Gish as Miss Cooper, I never felt any of the other characters were even remotely likable or had any actual importance during the context of the film. Many of them were incredibly obnoxious (*cough* Icey *cough*). The girl playing Pearl was atrocious. I could tolerate John. Shelley Winters was mediocre at best.
There was zero suspense. I was just merely curious as to the children’s fate, but that’s about it. Uninteresting main characters are the worst thing that can happen in a film, and this is a similar case. They’re children, yes, but for the most time, I felt that they were merely plot devices so that we could scrutinize the Preacher’s wild escapades. There wasn't any tension, apart from the scene were the children rush to the boat and the Preacher almost seizes them.
The film also seemed to endlessly drag for hours. There were a handful of elements thrown here and there but without any real purpose, meaning or development at all, e.g. the people’s hate toward the end (shown in the mob scene), the mild suggestion of child abuse, the barn the kids slept in (a scene which Laughton just put there so that he could show off with some marvelous cinematography of the Preacher with his horse), John shouting “No!! Don't!!” to the policemen that arrest the Preacher in the end, etc.
There were plenty of opportunities to convey some serious chills to the audience that were not handled very well: the Preacher’s insanity, his past murders of widows and their kids (clumsily shown at the very beginning with the camera slowly craning toward the body of a woman being discovered by children), his rage over children, Willa’s murder, the Preacher outside Miss Cooper’s house, the Preacher INSIDE the house. People call this film disturbing but it’s beyond my comprehension. I was disturbed by “The Innocents”, “Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte”, “Our Mother’s House”, “The Haunting”, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, etc. But not here.
The cinematography, admittedly, was beautiful. There was a lot of German Expressionism in Laughton's visual style which I greatly appreciated. The music score was amazing. These things helped endure the film to the end.