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When I screened a BFI 35mm print of this film as part of Great Expectations in Locarno 2025, I supplied the programme with the following brief blurb:
This morbid tale of a nymphomaniac Irish girl who brings death to men attracted to her is closer to Mexican Buñuel than to most British cinema. Lance Comfort is at his most confident, pushing the story to its limit, stopping just shy of outright horror fantasy.
A year on, Hammer has taken on the long-overdue task of bringing this small gem of British postwar cinema to a wider audience. The film has been given a 2K restoration, which will premiere on Blu-ray in February 2027. As is typical of Hammer’s releases, the disc comes with a wealth of extra material and is available to pre-order via this link.
I’m also pleased to have participated as one of the interviewees in a documentary included on the Blu-ray, exploring the life and career of Lance Comfort, one of the most underrated figures in the history of British cinema. I owe this opportunity to film historian and archivist Josephine Botting, who invited me to take part, probably following an essay I wrote on Comfort for Great Expectations. I appear alongside journalist Phuong Le, film and media historian Melanie Williams, and writer and researcher Marc David Jacobs.
This remains one of the most daring, unusual and visually rich classics of the 1940s. I believe Hammer is also going to republish my essay on Comfort in their periodical, which hopefully should shed further light on why, in my view, Comfort was a major talent who, even after falling from grace into the abyss of B-movies, could still deliver films marked by a personal touch and artistic integrity.
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