Goofs

When Powell chases the children up the cellar stairs and John slams the door on Powell's hand, the door had been opened toward the cellar. In the next scene, the door shows the closed door with the hinges on the kitchen side, such that the the door would have opened the opposite way, toward the kitchen (not toward the cellar).

(at around 53 mins) In the basement scene, John pulled down the overhead shelf with the jam or oils pouring over Harry's hairs and shoulders. In the following shot when Harry is trying to grab at John and Pearl, his hairdo remained its normal form without drops of oils or jam on them.

(at around 41 mins) Mr. Spoon opens the cabinet to get the peach brandy. In the next shot, the cabinet is closed and he opens it again to put the brandy away.

(at around 14 mins) When John is telling Pearl the bedtime story, Harry's shadow appears on the bedroom wall. When John looks outside at Harry at the gate, the angle of the streetlight next to him would not throw the shadow into the house, but on the ground in front of him.

(at around 1h 17 mins) When Harry says good morning to Ruby and Mrs. Cooper, he holds his hat about his chest. In the subsequent shot he is lifting his hat from about his knees.

A man who is sentenced to only thirty days for a misdemeanor would be sent to the county jail, and not the state penitentiary, and thus, would never be sharing a cell with a condemned man on death row.

(at around 56 mins) When the children escape by the river, the boat goes down the river against the current.

(at around 1h 3 mins) When John and Pearl are in the barn at dusk, there is a time-lapse sequence of the crescent moon rising. A crescent moon shortly after sunset is always setting and the lit portion should be tilted toward the point where the sun has recently set.

Some of the stars in the simulated night sky of some scenes are uncharacteristically blinking slowly on and off.

(at around 15 mins) Powell's shadow appears in the room of the children; in the next frame, he is standing under the street lamp with his shadow on the ground.

(at around 1h 22 mins) A wire is visible on the owl before it catches the rabbit.

The back cover of the movie magazine Harry buys for Ruby is completely blank.

The "movie money" used as the stolen $10,000 is actually Mexican revolutionary currency of 1914-15 with "El Estado de Chihuahua" readable on the bills.

The film is set in the 1930s, but John wears 1950s sneakers.

(at around 1h 10 mins) Although story is set in the Depression, a Forties era photo of Ingrid Bergman (then unknown to American filmgoers) adorns the cover of a magazine prominently displayed on a small town newsstand.

(at around 39 mins) When Willa Harper is lying in bed talking to Harry her mouth movements are out of sync with the dialogue.

(at around 1h 22 mins) After Harry Powell disappears from in front of Ms. Cooper's yard, a barn owl swoops down on a rabbit. The owl's wings are heard to flap even though barn owls make no noise when they fly.

(at around 1h 5 mins) When the children are asleep in the boat drifting downriver, right after a closeup of a fox jumping out of a tree, a cable pulling the boat is visible in the water.

When Harry tells Willa to stand in front of the mirror, Harry is briefly seen in the reflection and jumps out of the way.

(at around 59 mins) The turtle that John says could be made into soup is actually a desert tortoise, not found in West Virginia/Kentucky.

The Camera zooms closer to the dead girl's feet, before it zooms back to the kids, an extra shadow pops up Indicating Film Cut, also a Tire appears on the left side of the door when the camera moves away from the scene.

(at around 49 mins) When Harry tells the children about their "fine dinner, with fried chicken..." the chicken on the table is a whole, baked chicken.