59. ROBERT MITCHUM
The Night of the Hunter (1955)

In preaching ''the religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us,'' Harry Powell uses his left hand (marked H-A-T-E) and his right (L-O-V-E) to enact the wrestling match of good and evil. Is he an Old Testament prophet? A pagan angel? A crazy? Just a con? Mitchum deploys his natural cool to play an opaque soul with a transfixingly perverse way with a switchblade — a perfect freak.