Reverend Harry Powell

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Played by: Robert MitchumFilm(s): The Night Of The Hunter (1955)Robert Mitchum's preacher has 'love' tattooed on one hand, and 'hate' on the other, but there's never any doubt in Charles Laughton's superb directorial debut (and one-off) about which way Harry Powell leans. A cold-blooded killer who bashes more than the Bible, Powell is an implacable, unstoppable predecessor of characters like The... read more

Powell is a self declared itinerant preacher, who is also a con artist, and serial killer. He has the words "LOVE" tattooed on the knuckles of one hand and "HATE" tattooed on the other, a fact that he explains to his victims by using his hands in a sermon about the eternal struggle between good and evil. He spreads the gospel up and down the Ohio River in the late 1920s and early 1930s, gaining the trust of wealthy widows, marrying them and then killing them for their money. Driven by a fanatical hatred of women and sex, he believes that he is doing God's work, as "[God's] book is full of killin's." He roams the West Virginia and Ohio countryside along the river, leaving a trail of murdered women in his wake. He is featured in the film "The Night of the Hunter".