Charles Laughton is one of the forgotten titans of horror cinema. Between his Hollywood debut in The Old Dark House, his dazzling performances in Island of Lost Souls and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and his notoriously strange marriage to Elsa Lanchester (the Bride of Frankenstein herself), he is bound to the genre even in transcending it. This quality transfers to his only film in the director’s chair, which flits from suspense to adventure to film noir by turns. Sustained throughout is the languid atmosphere of American folk poetry, with sound and imagery expertly combined to plunge the audience into the shadowy landscape of children’s nightmares. Master cinematographer Stanley Cortez imbues the film with a series of unsettling images: a starry night sky; a phantom spider’s web; a house, a picket fence and a bird cage. These are the raw materials from which Laughton sculpts his masterpiece of terror.