DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS (1948)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

In the late 1940s Great Britain was even less productive of horror films than the U.S. I wasn't expecting much from my first screening of DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS, particularly when I noted that director Lance Comfort didn't have a stellar resume. However, DAUGHTER is also the only film IMDB credits to the resume of Max Catto, a novelist and playwright of some repute. For this low-budget movie Catto adapted one of his plays from ten years previous, of which the only summation I've found online was as follows: "the story was... about a young woman who became murderous when she heard the Church organ play." I tend to credit Catto with DAUGHTER's unusually nuanced quality. Since Catto didn't do other film scripts, I hypothesize that the producers offered the writer the chance to adapt the story to his liking-- even though he apparently excised his own concept of the "perilous psycho" being triggered by anything.

Indeed, the viewer of DAUGHTER never has the slightest idea of what goes on in the head of Emmy Baudine (Siobhan McKenna), resident of a small Irish town. The audience knows nothing of Emmy except that once she turns twenty-something, all the men in town are said to be enthralled by her (though the viewer doesn't actually see this) and all the women are fiercely jealous of her. There's never any evidence that Emmy is either oversexed or flirtatious; she keeps to herself, playing the organ in the local church, but the Irish women insist that she's evil, and pressure the priest to send her away. Even more remarkably, just as there's no mention of any psychological failings Emmy may have, the locals don't resort to any standard rationales for evil. There are no mentions of family curses, or "blood taints," or stories of fairy changelings. 

Emmy doesn't abide in Ireland much longer, but before she leaves, she has an encounter that determines the downward path of her fate. A carnival visits her small burg, and Emmy accepts a casual date with Dan, who performs fixed boxing fights as one of the carnival's attractions. He gets handsy with Emmy, so she scratches Dan's face-- hard enough to leave gouge-like scars we see later-- and escapes. That same night, the priest reveals that he's written to an English friend, Tallent, who runs a chicken farm, and that he's arranged for Emmy to become a serving-maid there, in order to pacify the Irish biddies.

However, fate works against Emmy here as well, for though the English farm is owned by a widower named Tallent, women, as much as in the Irish village, control the farm. The two women in control are the patriarch's daughter Julie (Honor Blackman in an early film-role) and Bess Stanforth (Anne Crawford). I frankly didn't catch any clue as to Bess's status. She always acts as if she's part of the family, despite the different last name. A cousin, perhaps. In any case, Julie doesn't have any problems with Emmy when she arrives to begin her new job. But Bess instantly picks up on those "evil vibes," though with zero justification for her dislike.

After a week or two, Emmy does transgress, somewhat. When Julie's boyfriend gets a little flirty with Emmy, the Irish colleen neither strongly encourages nor discourages him. Julie and Bess catch the boyfriend in the act, so he takes most of the heat, and Emmy's life is otherwise uneventful.

Then a carnival comes to the Tallents' English town-- and yes, it's the same one of which Dan's still a member. The Tallent family actually insists that Emmy attend the carnival with them, and of course she gets separated from them and cornered by Dan. He introduces her to his pet Alsatian, who immediately likes Emmy no better than most women. Then Dan gets the girl in a quiet place and attempts to rape her. Later, the dog guides locals to the body of the murdered boxer-- though oddly there's never one word about how Dan was killed.

Now, while the script does not quite take issue with a woman having defended herself from assault, there's a rough implication that the act of murder becomes an obsession for the Irish girl. On one hand, some unknown personage breaks into the local church at night and plays the organ, as if seeking absolution from God. On the other hand, Emmy befriends a perfectly nice chap and apparently kills him as well, since his body ends up in the rafters of the Tallents' barn, which Emmy also sets on fire. This seems less like an attempt to cover up the murder than a confession of her iniquity. And through it all, the Alsatian, having escaped the carnival, roams the area, looking for the slayer of its master.

Bess finally gives Emmy her walking papers, and Emmy reacts by playing up to Julie's naive younger brother. The next day, he's dead from some unspecified cause too, and Emmy's on the run. Bess finds her in the church playing the organ, but Emmy never actually admits her deeds, or even complains about provocation. Bess lets her go, but only because she suspects that Emmy's nemesis is at least ready to strike. After Emmy perishes, director Comfort's final shot is to pan past the periphery of the Church and its decorations, as if to affirm that some demon has been cast out and that normalcy can return.

Catto never states Emmy's motives outright, but the pattern of her killings suggests something like that of the 1940 LODGER script, in which a psychotic man becomes a serial killer to recapture the thrill of his first, more or less unintentional murder. More impressively, DAUGHTER is the earliest gynocentric British film I've encountered. Much like the American "weepies," where all the action revolves around women and the men are just pawns on the female chessboard, DAUGHTER is only concerned with the strange, instinctual world of women, and at times the story seems to validate the feminine ability to suss out, if not outright evil, the bad luck of a perilous, jonah-like individual. 

Both the identity of the organ-player and the canine's eerie quest for justice are given a strong uncanny vibe.