LoC #132 Top 112 Road Movies / Journey Films

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MILE 100

Darjeeling Limited ( 2007 )

Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Director: Wes Anderson

3 Points, 1 List, #23 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

After surviving a near fatal motorcycle accident, Francis Whitman convinces his brothers Peter and Jack to join him on a spiritual journey in India on the Darjeeling Limited a year after their father's funeral. However, he is secretly taking them to the Hindu monastery that there mother joined when she abandoned them.

And that is as much as I can do for this write-up. The various online synopsis for this film are cryptic beyond that point, offering no actual plot, which I am sure is due to it being a Wes Anderson film. Nor can I find anything online about the making of this film other than Anderson shot a film short called Hotel Chevalier which served as a sort of prequel. Three years earlier Anderson wrote and directed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou which was both a critical and financial failure, so this would be his comeback film. The only other thing I could find was that  after the Life Aquatic... disaster, Anderson decided his next film should be shot in India as a tribute to deceased film maker Satyajit Ray.

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MILE  99

Drugstore Cowboy ( 1989 )

Studio: Avenue Pictures
Director: Gus Van Sant

3 Points, 1 List, #23 Charles Castle

TRAILER

Four drug addicts travel across the West Coast robbing prescription drugs from pharmacies and clinics. After pulling off a robbery of a Portland clinic, they find themselves under surveillance by a local police detective who suspects they were the ones who pulled off the robbery, but have no idea where they hid the drugs they stole.


Gus Van Sant began his career with a critically acclaimed independent black and white film called Mala Noche. He immediately caught the attention of Universal pictures, who wanted him to work for them. However, he was not interested in shooting any movie Universal offered him, and after Universal turned down Drugstore Cowboy and a few other film ideas he pitched them, Van Sant decided to return to Portland and continue making independent films.  Drugstore Cowboy was based on an unpublished autobiographical novel of the same name written by real life criminal James Fogle, who had been captured and imprisoned at the time of the film's release. Initially Van Sant was asked to cast rock stars Bob Dylan and Patti Smith as the leads. Instead the parts went to  Matt Dillon who's career had been in a slump, and up and coming actress Kelly Lynch. While only earning a modest $4 million over a $2 million budget, the movie was a critical success, making most critics lists as one of the top ten movies of 1989. This spurred the publication of the source material as a novel. To date it is the only one of Fogle's unpublished novels to see print.

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MILE 98

A Goofy Movie( 1995 )

Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Director:Kevin Lima

4 Points, 1 List, #22 Pac-Man

TRAILER

After a school prank gets Max in serious trouble with the law, his father Goofy decides to take him out of town on a father and son road trip. Having already promised to take his girlfriend Roxanne on a date to a party where they will be watching the Powerline concert on Pay-Per-View, Max has no choice but to break the  date off. But then lies to Roxanne and tells her that he had been invited to perform on stage with  Powerline. This  will mean tricking his father into  driving to  California  where the concert is to be held instead of their intended  destination of Lake Destiny.

There is a moment in the film Stand By Me where Gordie  asks "If Mickey is a mouse, and Donald is a duck, and Pluto is a dog, then what is Goofy?" Of course this question has baffled Disney fans for decades. It had been established in Micky Mouses anthropomorphic world that some animals were intelligent, wore clothing  and could talk, while others remained dumb animals. Dogs in Micky's world were dogs. Pluto, although showing some signs of advanced intelligence, was still a dog who would never be able to talk. This was made more confusing by a series of drawings from Disney that showed Micky Mouse emerging from a mouse hole, Donald Duck floating in a pond, Pluto  sticking his head out of a doghouse, but Goofy sitting in what looks like a flying saucer. So Goofy was some sort of weird space alien? Eventually it was confirmed by the Disney company that Goofy, was in fact, a dog. The animators of the 1930s had not kept track of which animals were anthropomorphic and which were not. ( BTW, no one had Stand By Me on their lists. I  probably would have had it on my list if I had  remembered it, and only remembered it while writing this. And there  are a lot of other shocking omissions. )

Goofy  began as the character Dippy Dawg, created by voice actor Pinto Colvig, who based the character on a person he knew in Jacksonville Florida who he described as the town nitwit. Pinto had used the character as a stage performer, calling himself The Oregon Appleknocker. When animating the cartoon Micky's Review in 1932, Pinto suggested a dumb character could be in the audience, and eventually they settled on a dog. Dippy Dawg would appear in three more Micky Mouse cartoons, each time being drawn younger. With the 1934 cartoon Orphan's Benefit , the character was officially renamed Goofy.  The character eventually went from an annoying audience member to one of Micky's friends, and by 1935 was part of the Micky, Donald and Goofy team. In 1939 Goofy graduated to his own solo series of cartons, which continued through the 1960s. With the death of Pinto Colvig, Goofy was reduced to cameo appearances in the cartoons of others using voice recordings from previous cartoons. The vice of Goofy was officially recast for 1983's Micky's Christmas Carol, a film that revived most of the classic Disney characters, and encouraged the company to put their classic characters in other modern cartoons, such as Ducktales. Goofy reappeared in the animated series Goof Troop which introduced his son Max. After the show's second season, Disney decided it would be the basis of an animated theatrical movie, but gave it a direct-to-video budget. The decision was to advance the age of Max to a high school teenager. it would be the directorial debut of animator Kevin Lima, who would go on to co-direct Tarzan, and the live action films 102 Dalmatians and Enchanted.

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MILE  97

Around the World in 80 Days ( 1956 )

Studio: United Artists
Director: Michael Anderson

4 Points, 1 List, @22 Stethacantus

TRAILER

At the Reform Club in the mid 1800s, the members are discussing the advances made in world travel, and how long it could take to circumnavigate the globe. Phileas Fogg insists it can be done in 80 days or less, and to prove it,   accepts  a £20,000 bet that he can walk out of the club at that moment, leave for Europe, and within 80 days arrive back at the club. His only  companion is his valet Passepartout, who just began working for him that day.


Based on the Jules Vern novel written in 1873, this was the first major film adaption. It was the only film to be produced by Broadway impresario Michael Todd, and was directed by Michael Anderson, who had previously directed the screen adaption of Goerge Orwell's 1984, and would go on to direct Logan's Run and Orca. The main cast was David Nivan as Fogg, Robert Newton as Inspector Fix, Shirley MacLaine as the princess  from India Aouda, and if that cultural appropriation wasn't bad enough, popular Mexican comedian as the Frenchman Passepartout, who acts nothing like a Frenchman.  There is also a cast of hundreds as Fogg never stays in one location too long, that means a lot of stars showing up for a few hours of work on small roles. They include Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Buster Keaton, Cesar Romero, Charles Boyer, Noël Coward, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton, John Carradine and Edward R. Murrow. It would go on to be a blockbuster, and earn Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It would be followed by other adaptions, including the 2004 Disney film with  Steve Coogan and Jacky Chan, A 1989 miniseries wit Pierce Brosnan and Eric Idle, a docuseries made that same year with Michael Palin attempting to see if the journey could be made with only ground transportation, a 2021 miniseries starring David Tennant and Ibrahim Koma, and a 1963 adaption starring Jay Sheffield and The Three Stooges as Passepartout.

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MILE 96

Breaker! Breaker! ( 1977 )

Studio: AIP
Director: Don Hulette

5 Points, 1 List, #21 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

The 70's Car Chase Movie. I don't think this sub genre has any official name. But you would recognize it. A gold old boy driving a truck or stock car being perused by a red neck law officer, usually a  sheriff, and that law officer ending up in a ditch while the good old boy drives away laughing. The sub-genre was worn out by the time it was parodied in Bananarama's music video for Cruel Summer. Trying to figure out where this sub-genre came from is not easy. Most claim that it  arouse from the success of a novelty single recorded 1n 1975 by Bill Fries under the pseudonym of C.W, McCall. That song was called Convoy, and it reached #1 on the Billboard charts. A spoken word record with singers in the chorus, Fries  told a story using CB radio slang of a battle he was in with highway patrolmen and a convoy of truckers. With the success of the single, naturally Hollywood would be looking to capitalize on it's success. In fact, the song would be adapted into a major motion picture by Sam Peckinpahin 1978. Breaker! Breaker! was among the early trucker films. So early that there was no formula yet.  With the CB radio fad gone long ago, this film is only remembered for being Chuck Norris' first starring role. It's an odd film that is barely about trucking, barely about CB radios, and barely about martial arts. Norris plays a trucker called J.D. who's brother has disappeared when he drove his truck through Texas City, a small town that is a notorious speed trap  run by the corrupt Judge Trimmings. Truckers passing through are constantly pulled over for violations, both real and made up, and forced to pay hefty fines. Those who don't either end up in the hospital, or go missing. The townspeople refuse to help J.D. find his brother, and he eventually ends up arrested and locked in the town jail where his brother is being kept, both awaiting execution for being troublemakers. Fortunately J.D.s total lack of charisma has won over the town waitress, and she helps him out by contacting all of J.D.s trucker friends on the CB to tell them his plight. Hundreds of trucks drive into Texas City and by driving through the buildings, raze it to the ground. This allows J.D. to escape from the jail and have an extremely lame martial arts fight with the  town deputy.

If that doesn't sound like the formula for this genre, then you are right. The script is credited to Terry Chambers, who was actually one of the musicians on the soundtrack, and has no actual  screen writing credits on IMDb. Similarly, the producer and director is credited as Don Hulette, who is actually the composer for the soundtrack. My guess is that whoever was really responsible for this film had their names taken off, and credited it to the soundtrack department Norris claims he was only paid $5,000, and only agreed to such a low salary because he wanted to jumpstart his movie career. So no, Breaker! Breaker! is not an example of the 70s Car Chase Genre. But a week later another movie would be released that is not just a perfect example of the gene, it defined the formula for the genre. And it just happens to be the next movie on this list.........

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MILE 95

Smokey and the Bandit ( 1977 )

Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Hal Needham

5 Points, 1 List, #21 Stethacantus

TRAILER

Rich Texan Big Enos and his son Little Enos decide they want 400 cases of Coors beer at a party they are throwing in a state where Coors is not sold, and hire a legendary bootleg runner known as the bandit to do it. He will be paid $80,000 to do it, but only if he gets the beer to the party in 48 hours. The Bandit recruits a trucker known as Snowman to actually haul the beer, while Bandit will drive interference by drawing any police vehicles away from the speeding truck with his Trans-Am. After picking up the beer, a runaway bride named Carrie jumps into Bandit's car and asks him to drive her away from her fiancée. Bein a gentleman, Bandit agrees to help her. That fiancée turns out to be the son of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who becomes determined to get his son's bride back, and arrest the legendary Bandit. This results in the obsessed Sheriff pursuing the bandit way outside of his jurisdiction in a cross-country chase.

Smokey and the Bandit had everything a 70s chase movie needed. CB radios, trucks, the hero in a sports car for the police to chase, and a pompous redneck sheriff as the villain. While this film was part of the cluster of films made to capitalize off of the success of the song Convoy and the CB radio fad, it could be considered a continuation of a genre that had been evolving since the late 60s. Films like Vanishing Point ( 1971 ), Gone in 60 Seconds ( 1974 ) and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry ( 1974 ) featured protagonists who are chased by police. And the character of the pompous redneck sheriff goes back at least to Sheriff J.W. Pepper in the James Bond film Live and Let Die ( 1973 ). While the writers of this movie's script had been borrowing elements from several successful films of the past, the clear intent was to capitalize off of the CB radio craze. Hal Needham had been a stuntman who had risen up the ranks to stunt coordinator and eventually second unit director for stunt scenes. Close friend Burt Rynolds encouraged Needham to become a director, and he decided to make a cheap exploitation film for Corman or API or one of the other small studios. He had written a script for a film called Smokey and the Bandit to be a CB radio film, and Reynolds had talked singer and actor Jerry Reed to star as the Bandit. Eventually Universal became interested, but only if Burt Reynolds would star, and there was a complete rewrite of the script. The film was such a huge success , only being beaten out by Star Wars as the highest grossing film of 1977. Universal wanted a sequel, and was willing to hire back the entire cast for whatever money they asked for. Smokey and the Bandit II was panned by the critics, but made enough money that Universal wanted to continue the franchise. Unable to get Burt Rynolds, Jerry Reed, Sally Field or Hal Needham to do another film in the series, they signed Jackie Gleason and shot an entire unreleased movie called Smokey is the Bandit where Buford T. Justice becomes the new Bandit after retiring from law enforcement. Test audiences hated it, so Universal offered Burt Rynolds and Jerry Reed even more money to return. Reynolds agreed too a huge payday for just a brief cameo, while Reed agreed to a bigger role. All scenes with Jackie Gleason as the Bandit were reshot with Jerry Reed as the new Bandit. Despite the reshoots, Smokey and the Bandit III was a critical and financial failure. It was the death of Jackie Gleason that finally brought the franchise to an end. However, several television films featuring te Bandit were made in the 90s with the role recast to actor Brian Bloom.

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MILE 94

Stranger Than Paradise( 1984 )

Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Company
Director:Jim Jarmusch

5 Points, 1 List, #21 Charles Castle

TRAILER

Wilie gets a call from his aunt that Eva, his cousin from Hungary, is coming to live with her in Cleveland, but needs to stay with him for ten days while his aunt recuperates in the hospital from an accident. While at first Willie didn't want to host Eva, he gradually falls in love with her, and is not happy when she leaves after the ten days are up. A year later Willie talks his friend Eddie into going on a road trip to Cleveland so he can visit his aunt, but really wants to see Eva again. After his visit with his aunt, Willie talks Eddie into going on a road trip to Florida and to take Eva with them.


This movie didn't just launch the career of independent film director Jim Jarmusch, but was the first of the low-budget independent film wave which dominated the 90s. Originally made as a 30 minute short in 1982 by Jarmusch who was fresh from film school, it would later be expanded into a 90 minute feature broken into three acts.    Jarmusch's teacher at the school was director Nicholas Ray. In 1977 Ray was diagnosed with lung cancer, which by 1979 had become terminal. Collaborating with director  Wim Wenders, Ray decided to capture his final days on film as a documentary. Jarmusch remained with Ray as an assistant. When Ray died  in June of 1979, Wenders gave Jarmusch the unused film stock so he could make his Stranger Than Paradise short, which was released in 1982. The short would later become the first act of the expanded movie.

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MILE 93

Toy Story 4 ( 2019 )

Studio: Walt Disney/Pixar
Director: Josh Cooley

5 Points, 1 List, #21 Pac-Man

TRAILER

From a movie that was made to be a non commercial art film, to one that is nothing but commercial.  I suppose you could think of the original Toy Story film as a work of art. But after they began making sequels, and after they said the third film was just to complete a trilogy and would be the final film, and then Disney decided they wanted a fourth film, this movies is all about the box office. Of course, Pixar was capable of making a fourth film in the series but still being able to make a great movie out of the same premise.  This film has the toys owner Bonnie taking them with her when the family take their RV on a road trip. Woody falls out of the RV while attempting to save another toy, an art project Bonnie created n school called Forky, who is so convinced he is nothing more than garbage that he jumps from the RV. On the long hike to the trailer park where the RV was headed, Woody finds Bo Peep. You know, the toy that was originally Woody's girlfriend  until Jessie showed up in the second film, and deciding  Woody would not need two girlfriends, had her written out for the third film by mentioning she was one of the toys tat had been given away. Which got a lot of backlash from Toy Story fans, resulting in the writers bringing her back for this film. Anyway, aside from the spinoff film Lightyear, this film was the perfect ending to the Toy Story franchise. Wait, what's that? Disney announced a Toy Story 5?

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MILE  92

Stagecoach ( 1939 )

Studio: United Artists
Director: John Ford

5 Points, 1 List, #21 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

A group of settlers board a stagecoach traveling from Arizona to New Mexico. Warned that Apache leader Geronimo has taken his tribes on the warpath, the coach is promised an escort by the cavalry. On the road they pick up a couple of men, one who is the Ringo Kid who had just escaped from jail, and is taken into custody by a marshal among the passengers. They reach the area they were supposed to meet their escort, but learn the cavalry was diverted to fight the Apaches, and if they continue, it will be without protection. The passengers vote to continue, but inevitably run into an attacking band of Apaches.

The heyday of the American Western was during the silent era beginning with Edison's The Great Train Robbery. By the 1930s the popularity of the genre had long passed, and Westerns were reduced to B features.  John Ford had been directing Westerns since 1917, and had wished to bring the genre back to prominence with one of the first big budget Westerns in years. He chose to adapt the short story The Stage to Lordsburg by Ernest Haycox, which he read in Collier's magazine. He also adapted elements from another short story, Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant, about a French prostitute on a stagecoach during Franco-Prussian War. The two short stories were adapted into a full length feature by Dudley Nichols, the screen writer who had previously written   Bringing Up Baby and  Gunga Din.  Choosing not to shoot on the usual neighboring ranches and studio backlots, his would be the first of John Ford's films to be shot in Monument Valley. Another milestone for Ford was the decision to cast John Wayne as the Ringo Kid. Up to that point Wayne was a little known actor of B movies at the Poverty Row studios. Stagecoach would be such a huge hit, that it brought the mainstream Western back, and would turn John Wayne into a major movie star. It would be remade twice. Once in 1966, and again in 1986 starring the Country-Western supergroup The Highwaymen.

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MILE 91

Fitzcarraldo ( 1982 )

Studio: ZDF
Director:Werner Herzog

6 Points, 1 List, #20 Charles Castle

TRAILER

Irish businessman Brian Fitzgerald wished to open an opera house in Iquitos, a city of Peru. In order to finance it, he decides to operate a rubber plantation, and purchases a parcel of rubber trees from the government. However, he soon learns the reason why the parcel was still available was because the river leading to it had a section of rapids that no steam ship can pass through. Buying a steam ship, he sails it up a nearby river with a plan to have a native tribe haul the entire 300 ton ship over a mountain that separates both rivers.


The film is based on real life rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald López who in 1894 transported a steam ship across a mountain. His ship was only 30 tons, considerably smaller than the one in the film, and had been dismantles into smaller sections which were transported individually over the mountain before being reassembled in the other river. Director Werner Herzog saw the potential for an epic film based on the story. His film turned out to be far more ambitious than what López had attempted, as he wanted an actual 300 ton steamship over an actual mountain. The event was filmed for the documentary Burden of Dreams, which most critics liked better than Fitzcarraldo itself. It wasn't just the actual hauling of a ship over a mountain that made this a hard movie to film. The original cast was Jason Robards as the lead and Mick Jagger as his assistant. Midway through filming, Robards ended up hospitalized with dysentery and had to drop out of the movie. His role was recast to Klaus Kinski, an actor who had a stormy relationship with Herzog. The entire film had to be reshot from the beginning. A few weeks later Jagger had to drop out himself. Reshooting the film had put it way behind schedule, and Jagger had to leave for a planned tour with The Rolling Stones. Not wanting to start from the beginning again, Herzog decided to write Jagger's character out of the film.

[Edward J Grug III]

Fitzcarraldo is the one I described as so borderline, I left it off. If it had been on my list, I think it would have been fairly high.

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MILE  90

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome ( 1985 )

Studio: Kennedy Miller Productions
Director: George Miller

6 Points, 1 List, #20 RVRII

TRAILER

The entire world ( or maybe just Australia )  is in an apocalyptic dark age. Max, a former highway patrolman turned antihero, enters Bartertown, an outpost where scavengers trade their loot. Aunty Entity, the leader of Bartertown, allows Max entry, provided he does a favor for her. Her rule is challenged by Masterblaster, a team made up of a dwarf genius named Mater, and the giant he rides on called Blaster. As part of his deal with Aunty, Max challenges Masterblaster to a fight in the Thunderdome. He is able to disable Blaster, but refuses to kill him. So Aunty kills the wounded Blaster herself and has Max tied to a horse which is sent aimlessly into the desert. He ends up at an oasis populated by feral children. Years earlier their plane had crashed, and the surviving parents left to find help, only to never return. When the kids learn of Bartertown, some decide to leave the Oasis to find it. Max goes after them to bring them back, but ends up in Bartertown with them. He decides to free Master, who is being held captive by Aunty, and together they escape Bartertown in a vehicle, leading to the much anticipated Road Warrior style chase scene.


With the success of Mad Max II which was released worldwide as The Road Warrior, , producer and co-creator of the franchise Byron Kennedy immediately began scouting new locations for a possible third film. While doing this, he crashed his helicopter into Warragamba Dam and was killed. Director George Miller initially believed the franchise had died without his partner, but was eventually convinced the only way for him to honor Byron and get over the grief of his death. With Mel Gibson  becoming a worldwide superstar, and The Road Warrior being such a huge success, Miller was given a far bigger budget, and encouraged to make a film that would better appeal to the worldwide market. This lead to some complaining that Beyond Thunderdome was too Hollywood. Composer Brian May, who had scored the first two films in the series, was replaced by Maurice Jarre the academy award winning composer who had scored Lawrence of Arabia and other award winning films. Furthermore American pop star Tina Turner, who's only prior acting experience was as the Acid Queen in The Who's Tommy,  was cast as the film's villain Aunty Entity. She also contributed two songs to the soundtrack, including  We don't need another hero ( Thunderdome )   which reached #2  on the Billboard Top 100 Chart. MasterBlaster is said to have been influenced by  Van Bullock and Como in the German martial arts film Roots of Evil.

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MILE 89

We're The Millers ( 2013 )

Studio: New Line Cinema / Warner Bros.
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber

7 Points, 1 List, #19 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

when a drug dealer is robbed of his drugs and money, his supplier he owes the money to demands that he smuggle two tons of marijuana in an RV from Mexico into the United States to clear his debt. Realizing a lone man driving into the United States would look suspicious to the customs officers, he decides  to fabricate a family called The Millers by hiring a stripper to be his wife, and a runaway and the nerd living next door to be his kids.

After the success of Wedding Crashers, the screenwriting team of Bob Fisher and Steve Faber wrote a treatment for a comedy about a drug dealer creating a fake middle class family in order to smuggle drugs past boarder agents. It was picked up by producer Chris Bender who previously worked on the American Pie and Hangover franchises, who in turn hired Peter Cattaneo the director of The Full Monty, who cast  Steve Buscemi as the lead.  When New Line Cinema green lit it, Cattaneo and Buscemi were both out. The writers of Sex Drive,  Sean Anders and John Morris, were brought in to rewrite the script, and Burr Steers was to direct. Then Burr Steers dropped out, and both Anders and Moris were  asked if they wanted to direct it. Eventually Rawson Marshall Thurber who previously directed    Dodgeball  was signed, and the cast was finally selected. The film was successful enough that there was to be  a sequel called We're Still the Millers, but those plans fell through.

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MILE 88

Titanic ( 1997 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures / 20th Century Fox
Director: James Cameron

7 Points, 1 List, #19 RVRII

TRAILER

2,500 passengers board what is supposed to be an unsinkable ship, little realizing the captain had figured out a way to sink it.

Really, there is not much to say about this film. Perhaps one of the best known historical disasters was the sinking of the Titanic. By the time Cameron made his film, there had already been  seven feature films, two television films, and a Broadway musical. So why retell such a well known story? It started because Cameron wanted to go diving. After seeing a documentary about explorers taking a submarine down to explore the wreck of the Titanic, Cameron wanted to go down and see it for himself. So to pay for the expensive expedition, he told 20th Century Fox that he wanted to do a Titanic film and needed to se the wreck for himself in order to write the script. Having originally planed to just do a quicky love story aboard the doomed ship, he became profoundly inspired by the dive, and vowed to do a proper film  about the disaster. His film eventually went well over the projected budget, eventually costing the studio $200 million.  The $2 billion it made at the box office more than made up for that.

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MILE 87

The Night of the Hunter ( 1955 )

Studio: United Artists
Director: Charles Laughton

7 Points, 1 List, #19 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

Serial killer Reverend Harry Powell is arrested for driving a stolen car and ends up sharing a cell with bank robber Ben Harper, who stole $10.000 in his last job and will not tell the police where he hid it.  Harper has told his children where the money is hidden, but refuses to tell his cell mate Powell, taking the location of the money to his grave when he is eventually hanged for murdering two people during the robbery. When Powell is released from prison, he makes his way to Harper's home town, and woos his widow, eventually marrying her. This gets him no closer to the money, so he ends up killing her and chasing after Harpers children who know where the money is.

The movie was adapted from author Davis Grubb's first novel. He had based it on serial killer Harry Powers, who in 1932 was convicted and executed for the murder of two widows and their three children, with at least two other murders he was thought to have committed. In each case Powers had married the widows for their money and murdered them once he obtained it. In Grubb's book, Power's last name was changed to Powell, and his victims were fictional characters. Shortly after the novel was published, Paul Gregory, the personal assistant for actor Charles Loughton. read it and immediately bought the film rights. Knowing that Laughton wanted to become a director, Gregory showed him the book, and offered to produce the movie. It would be the first and last film directed by Laughton. Critics hated  it, and it bombed at the box office. Gregory had already bought the film rights to another book,  Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, for Laughton to direct. But after the failure of Night of the Hunter, RKO Pictures fired Laughton and hired Raoul Walsh to direct it instead. And with that, Charles Laughton's directing career came to an end. As did Paul Gregory's producing career. Decades later critics re-evaluated the film, and it is now considered one of the all time greatest American films, usually placed in the top five with The Godfather parts I and II, Vertigo and Citizen Kane. Of course, this praise did not happen until long after Laughton was dead.