Charles Laughton, who’s a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is ’The Night of the Hunter.’ It’s full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio.

Cox is praising actor-director Charles Laughton’s singular achievement as a filmmaker: despite directing only one feature, Laughton produced a work whose artistry places it among cinema’s classics. The emphasis on “imagination,” “creation,” and “using the studio” points to the film’s highly stylized, expressionistic look—sets, lighting, and staging that feel deliberately artificial in order to heighten mood and meaning. Cox’s admiration suggests a broader claim about artistic risk: mastery is not measured by quantity of output but by the intensity of vision and craft. The quote also frames studio artifice not as a limitation but as a creative instrument capable of producing “fantastical” cinematic worlds.