Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

is being followed. In this context, the darkened staircase, only lit by flickering candles,
evokes the imagined fears of childhood. Again in Freudian terms, the creepy reaction to
being followed up gloomy stairs at night is evocative of the “dark continent”, the metaphor
that Freudian psychology used to describe female sexuality and the enigma that lies
beneath it, this expressing the castration anxiety of the male who approaches it.
Figure 92. The Night of the Hunter
The same strange feeling of malevolence in pursuit is made evident by serial killer
Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a misogynistic preacher with the word “LOVE” tattooed
on the knuckles of his right hand and “HATE” on the knuckles of his left, who is also a
terrifying psychopath calling to the children from the top of the stairs (fig. 92) in Charles
Laughton’s noir The Night of the Hunter. This upsetting and intricate story was designed to
have the singular experience of a child’s nightmare, including the difficulty of trying to
keep a secret, and it is actually told from the perspective of a child.
The basement sequence in the figure above shows a frightening expressionistic
composition casting Mitchum’s huge, terrifying shadow on the wall, as he comes down the
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