Daughter of Darkness

Emily (Siobhan McKenna) is a beautiful young woman in an Irish village who works for the local priest. She is shunned by the village women who consider her strange and believe she unsettles the men. When Dan, a fairground boxer, tries to seduce her, she disfigures his face with her fingernails. The priest yields to pressure from the villagers and arranges for Emily to go to work on a farm in Yorkshire. She struggles to suppress the feelings of fascination and revulsion she experiences in the presence of men. Comfort’s mysterious, fascinating psychosexual thriller, which has elements of Gothic horror and film noir, broke with the traditions of 1940s British Gothic melodrama to present a psychologically complex protagonist whose unbridled sexuality is expressed in a surprisingly blunt manner.