Daughter of Darkness

Daughter of Darkness is directed by Lance Comfort and adapted to screenplay by Max Catto from his own play titled They Walk Alone. It stars Anne Crawford, Maxwell Reed, Siobhan McKenna, George Thorpe, Barry Morse, Liam Redmond, Cyril Smith and Honor Blackman. Music is by Clifton Parker and cinematography by Stanley Pavey.

Emmie Beaudine (McKenna) isn't liked by the women folk of the Irish village community where she lives. There's something about her that riles them, frightens them even. So when the women of the village round up on her keeper, the priest, she is sent off to live on a farm in a North Yorkshire county of England. Which is timely as she has had an altercation with one of the men from a travelling fair. Once at the "Tallent" family farm, Emmie settles in well and seems genuinely happy, but still some of the women folk in the vicinity view her with suspicion, and when a face from Emmie's past shows up, it's the catalyst for doom and desperation.

It's an odd chiller of a movie, something of an acquired taste, it's hard to pigeonhole. Never overtly horror, noir or otherwise, it's not hard to see why some specialist genre fans have found it a disappointment. Yet if you can buy into Comfort and Catto's ethereal world there's a picture of great rewards here, a complex character study mingling with asides on sexual empowerment, even a story with supernatural leanings, the edges of which are deliberately shaded in grey. And of course there's the crime factor bulging at the seams, Emmie Beaudine a cold murderess, her rhyme and reason for being so repulsed by male sexual contact is again deliberately left floating in an emotionally distorted purgatory.

Nicely photographed in black and white, the visual atmosphere is very tight to the murky themes swirling around the plot. There's also a number of memorable scenes, the hurly burly of the carnival sequences, the hauntingly troubling playing of an organ, and some super scenes featuring Thorn the Alsatian dog, a real life war hero (look him up, amazing animal) who is also very much a key character here. Strong acting performances around McKenna are a bonus (including the beautiful Blackman in her first credited role), but it is the Northern Irish actress who spellbindingly holds court, with much of her visual acting stunning in its execution.

Love it or hate it, you wont be able to ignore it. 9/10

I am dismayed by just about all the reviews which precede mine, mainly due to the fact that they seem seriously involved with the film only when trying to psychoanalyze the title character, which simply cannot be done because the screenplay never really gets very involved in doing so; this actually makes the nuanced performances of all concerned that much more admirable and certainly does so with the direction of the film by Lance Comfort.

This may not be LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, but I think the dismissal of it as a quota quickie or a British B film is a bit much. The carnival scenes alone seem to demonstrate that some expense was gone to in the film's making and, in pure size at least, compare well with those in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. And while Comfort may not be David Lean, it is obnoxious to call him, as one commentator did, the English Ed Wood, as this bespeaks a total lack of knowledge of either man's work. Comfort achieves a tremendously atmospheric production throughout, and is hampered in suspense only by the holes in the screenplay, which simply do not give any indication of what forces drive the title character. (He does similar and excellent work in BEDELIA.)

As for the acting, which is excellent on everybody's part, someone complains about the 'posh' accents used in the farming family for whom the Irish girl goes to work, but he should be advised that not every farming family in England is the British equivalent of the Joads, especially in the post WW2 era. Many of those families were quite wealthy and educated - this particular family seems to have at least 15 or 20 farmhands working for them and are leaders in the community. Also, with the exception of some undeservedly nasty remarks about Maxwell Reed (who could hardly be better at playing a lowlife than what we see here), and a couple of mentions of this being Honor Blackman's first movie (actually, it was her second), the important considerations about most of the cast go unmentioned. The first may be that we get a look at a very young Barry Morse (later, of THE FUGITIVE TV fame), more importantly at the very stylish Anne Crawford, who was a fairly major English star of the day and who tragically died of leukemia at 36, and most particularly, at Siobhan McKenna, who was quite arguably the greatest Irish actress of the entire twentieth century (and certainly of the second half of it) and regarded so by critics and audiences alike, but who, with the exception of not more than a half-dozen times (mostly early on), eschewed film appearances almost entirely in favor of stage work on both sides of the Atlantic and a very occasional TV appearance. Do most of the correspondents here even know that? It would seem not. That all of this about her (and to some extent the others) goes unmentioned, while commentators waste their time with gratuitous attacks on even the unnamed wife of one of this film's stars, does not say a great deal of good about much of what appears in these reviews.

This is a rock-solid film made less than it might have been by an unclear screenplay; it might have been something of a masterpiece if made by an Alfred Hitchcock, but to blame Lance Comfort for not being Alfred Hitchcock is like blaming Cary Grant for not being John Gielgud - in other words, just plain silly.

This is a little known movie but one undeserving of the obscurity into which it has fallen ,throwing,as it does , a sharp light on the narrow mindedness and pettiness of small ,enclosed and isolated communities .The opening sequence is especially gripping and commands attention from the word go.It takes place in a church in a small ,backwater Irish community where the local women break off from their gossip to eye with undisguised loathing a younger woman ,Emily Beaudine (Siobahn Mckenna).She has the reputation of being a siren ,a temptress able to turn the heads of the men of the village .In a scene between herself and the local priest it is hinted strongly that he too feels an attraction towards Emily .To add to the miasma of gloom and oppression ,she is a talented organist but one with a fondness for the tonally darker and more plangent aspects of the instrument's tonal pallete . She is isolated within her community and young girl's warned not to associate with her .When a fair visits the village she receives the unwanted attention of Dan ,a boxer employed by the fir ,and she wounds him in self defence .She is sent away to england where she ingratiates herself with the Talent family ,until the return of Dan and the suspicion of the eldest Talent sister Beth precipitates the final tragedy

Lance Comfort directs with fine use of light and shade and good use of some neat monochrome photography .The script leaves open the issue of Emily's true nature giving a pleasing ambiguity to proceedings and the fine ,intense performance of Siobahn Mckenna makes her relatively sparse engagement with the movies a matter to be regretted

This is no masterpiece but it is a subtle ,ambiguous picture that should be better known

This is a very remarkable film on a very remarkable story. There is probably some true background of its origin, because it is too realistic, both psychologically and in its characterizations not to have been founded on some truth. There is nothing wrong with Amy, and still everyone turns against her, only because she makes people feel uncomfortable, and able-bodied men are attracted to her with such a force that they cannot control it. Where does it all go wrong? It all goes wrong from the beginning, when the priest listens to the gossip of old spinsters and submits to their fanatical demand to have her thrown out of the community. He gets her a position on a farm in England by the coast for a compensation, but as the young men there are attracted to her, the women turn against her also there. A gipsy of a fair that saved her from some trouble in Ireland and then could not leave her in peace, turns up again at her farm in England, repeats his mistake and gets what he asked for, although he was well warned once. And thus the vicious circle begins. Siobhan McKenna makes an unforgettable characterization of a one-sidedly lovable sweet girl who unwillingly becomes the cause of harm done on an accelerating scale, and although the terror increases you must sympathize with her and defend her against all the world. It's they who go out of control, while she only plays the organ and desperately seeks to judst be left alone in peace, which no one will leave her. It's perhaps the anatomy of a witch, a destiny which is rather forced upon her than that she chooses it herself. The story is very dramatic, the plot thickening all the time, and the cinematography is on a virtuoso level, like the direction. Lance Comfort made quite a few films like this, and they are all remarkable and memorable. To all this comes William Alwyn's alwaysperfectly fitting, impressing and suggestive music. I felt tempted to almost give it a full 10 points.

Daughter of Darkness is a strange noir with gothic touches starring Anne Crawford, Maxwell Reed, Siobhan McKenna, Honor Blackman, and Barry Morse.

McKenna is Emmy, a pretty young Irish girl who seems sweet and shy. Evidently she gives off a scary vibe. While men flock to her, women hate her and ask the priest for whom she works to get rid of her.

A fair comes to town and one of the performers (Reed) is attracted to Emmy. She flirts but then rejects him. One night she scars his face with her fingernails.

At this point, the priest sends her to work on a family farm. When the fair hits that location, Reed comes after her again. The next day he's found dead. More murders follow.

We don't really know if Emily has a problem where she wants affection (sex) and becomes terrified, or if she's Circe leading men to their doom. I tend to think she's the latter.

Good film and a suspenseful one, especially at the end, when you know what's going to happen.

A note here on Barry Morse, who plays Anne Crawford's husband. He is known to us boomers anyway as the feared Lt. Gerard from the tv show The Fugitive. Seeing him so young and with an accent- you wouldn't know it's the same person. Obviously quite talented.