source: Daughter of Darkness

Daughter of Darkness

It was my day for serial killer woman movie, after just having seen "a Candle for the Devil" directed by Eugenio Martin. "Daughter of Darkness" is a swell B movie about a young serial killer woman in english countryside. Lot of creativity : night expressionnist photography, virtuoso travellings, the killer girl playing organ, creepy shots of dog, ... so many details are seldom seen in usual murder movies in the 40-50's. It can easily be compared to "Cat People". Siobhan McKenna, who plays the devil girl, isn't as pretty as Simone Simon, but she's still really creepy. And for these reasons and many more, Lance Comfort is much better than Ed Wood, for sure.

The servant girl most of the women hate but all the men cannot resist is neither especially pretty or flirtatious...she does not even wear provocative clothes and the film never really explains why she is supposedly so evil. Based on her interactions with men in the movie, it seems like each man tried to rape her and thus they got what they deserved. I was expecting she was a vampire/Dracula's daughter but no such thing. I felt sorry for her. Having said that, the movie was quite suspenseful and well photographed...it just made little sense without any explanation of her "evil" and why men were drawn to her.

The story sees an Irish girl Emmie (Siobhan McKenna) driven from her community and relocated with a farm family in England. Other women can sense evil around her yet she seems innocent to the viewer. However, by the end of the film, it's pretty clear that Emmie is bad news as the body count increases! Throughout the film, Bess (Anne Crawford) senses that there is something wrong about the girl. She finally fires her to which the response is "You'll be sorry". You just know that there is going to be a repercussion .... and there is..... Siobhan McKenna is creepy in the lead role - she looks weird. The English family that she stays with is pretty ghastly with their extremely posh accents and enthusiasm for everything (among the guilty for inappropriate posh dialect is Honor Blackman) yet this doesn't distract from the story. It's a good film with some genuinely creepy scenes.