Night of the Hunter (1955) SE? (1 Viewer)

[Lyle H.]

With the announcment of the SE of Manchurian Candidate, do you reckon MGM will re-master and add extras to a new release of Night of the Hunter? The DVD was pretty crappy, but i'll take what I can get until they decide this is more worthwhile to remaster than Journey to the Seventh Planet.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I saw "Night of the Hunter" in Chicago about 2 years ago and at that presentation one of the people responsible for the film's restoration held a Q&A session. He mentioned during that session that Elsa Lanchester (Charles Laughton's Widow) had donated all of her home movies to the UCLA film archives. These films included copius amounts of backstage footage during the filming of "Night of the Hunter". He mentioned that this footage would be assembled into a feature length documentary and that a new DVD of "Night of the Hunter" would come out at some time in the future and would contain some of this footage. I've still got my fingers crossed.

 

[Jake Johnson]

This must happen! MGM needs to get on this. I would kill for a new transfer.

 

[Richard Carnahan]

I saw "Night of the Hunter" in Chicago about 2 years ago and at that presentation one of the people responsible for the film's restoration held a Q&A session. He mentioned during that session that Elsa Lanchester (Charles Laughton's Widow) had donated all of her home movies to the UCLA film archives. These films included copius amounts of backstage footage during the filming of "Night of the Hunter". He mentioned that this footage would be assembled into a feature length documentary and that a new DVD of "Night of the Hunter" would come out at some time in the future and would contain some of this footage. I've still got my fingers crossed.
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These are not "home movies" but hours of outtakes from the film itself.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Ted

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

I'd buy a SE remaster.

 

[Lyle H.]

Who do I email about this?

I'd buy several copies of this! :-D

 

[Eric Peterson]

I'm happy to hear that the documentary was completed. Curious that I haven't heard anything about it though. I hope that this makes a tour of major US cities and eventually DVD. "Night of the Hunter" is one of my top 10 movies and have a framed lobby card of Mitchum with "Love" & "Hate" on his knuckles right over my couch.

 

[Jake Johnson]

That would be amazing if MGM would release a Criterion-style SE with the 158 min. documentary included. Or...Criterion could just produce the set. I wonder how many people connnected with movies have really cool behind the scenes footage just sitting in their closets. Its rumored that Greg Nicotero (the make-up effect supervisor on Evil Dead 2) has over 6 hours of behind the scenes footage of ED2 in his house. I wish studios would spend more time tracking this stuff down.