Perkins is the farmer's son Eben, awaiting the day he will inherit the land from his tyrannical, widowed father (Burl Ives). But when Eben's father takes a new wife and announces he'll leave the farm to her, passions erupt in a fiery night of lust and fury between Eben and his new stepmother (Sophia Loren, in her Hollywood film debut). With a sweeping score by Elmer Bernstein, Desire Under The Elms sizzles with a heated story of passion unleashed and temptation unbridled, and a heavy price paid for the pleasures of sin.