Hungry Hill [1947] [DVD]

"Hungry Hill" boils down to a three-generation account of the fighting and feuding between two Irish families, the wealthy Brodricks and the impoverished Donovans.

The story is not clearly motivated but it is established that old Morty Donovan was against Jim Broderick sinking a copper mine in Hungry Hill and calls a black curse down upon the endeavor, Brodrick himself and all his heirs and assigns.

It's a corker of a curse, to be sure, leading to a disaster in the pits, a riot between the townspeople and the imported Cornish workers and death, sickness and other calamities which, strangely enough, appear to be visited almost equally upon both families over the years.