Village of the Damned/Children of the Damned (1960)

What's scarier than scary kids? Village of the Damned is the definitive scary-kid classic, a truly unsettling film drawn from John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The brilliant opening sequence depicts the sudden and temporary paralysis of a small English hamlet, which is followed by the town's women becoming mysteriously pregnant. The spawn of this occurrence are a dozen eerie, blond-headed children, who are either gifted, evil, or "the world's new people." A splendid outing, not least in the way it catches parental anxiety about this small new stranger in one's home. (It was remade by John Carpenter in 1995.)

Children of the Damned follows up with a story about six more creepy kids, brought from all over the globe to huddle in a old church in London. An excellent opening half-hour gets bogged down in the movie's global-political ambitions (it's very much a cold war offering), but it has its share of shivery moments--the sight of the six youngsters striding down a London street as though they controlled the world is a chiller. But where's the blond hair? The two films are different in tone; Village feels like a fifties sci-fi offering, with an old-school star (George Sanders) and classical style; Children is a film of the sixties, with hipper techniques, urban setting, and young actors Ian Hendry and Alan Badel. But both have those damned kids. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

Creepy glowy-eyed kids take over village, film at 11

Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960)

Wolf Rilla directed quite a few movies in his time, but these days, he's remembered for only one-- Village of the Damned, Stirling Silliphant's thoroughly weird adaptation of John Wyndham's even weirder The Midwich Cuckoos. I am somewhat convinced that Silliphant has more to do with the movie's enduring creepiness (and its classic status), but when it comes right down to it, none of the folks behind the cameras can take anywhere near as much credit as Martin Stephens, the towheaded lad who would immediately become typecast as "that weird little squib," ending his career quite prematurely by playing similarly eerie kids in Jack Clayton's The Innocents and Cyril Frankel's The Witches (though he was slightly older by then). I get ahead of myself, though, as Stephens and his similarly shockingly blond companions don't pop up until almost halfway through this flick.

We start out with the town of Midwich, a bucolic little English village, falling asleep. Yes, falling asleep. The entire town, animals and all. At the time this happens, Midwich resident Gordon Zellaby (Geroge Sanders) is on the phone with his brother-in-law, Alan (Michael Gwynn). Alan is understandably concerned, and as a military man, he has the resources to make people take his concern seriously. He soon discovers that Midwich seems surrounded by an odd sphere of sleep-- anyone who crosses into the sphere falls asleep immediately. After a few hours, this goes away. Nine months later, every woman in the village of childbearing age, including Gordon's wife Anthea (Barbara Shelley), gives birth to a child with a bright shock of blonde hair. Needless to say, this causes some marital tension (and more than a few unwed mothers). Where did these kids come from? Fast-forward a few years, we meet them as adolescents, and that's where Martin Stephens, playing David, the Zellabys' son, and his cadre of blond psychopaths enters. Gordon, a scientist, is desperate to study the children; other towns where similar outbreaks occurred at the same time have taken a more pragmatic route, destroying the towns and the children. Zellaby senior fights the British government to keep the kids alive, even as Zellaby junior makes him question the wisdom of the decision.

It's pretty obvious that the underlying anxiety in this movie has to do with kids reaching their adolescent years and asserting their independence; doesn't take a highly-qualified psychologist to pick up on that. What Wyndham (and Silliphant, in his extraordinary adaptation) focuses in on is the inherent creepiness of the idea from a parent's perspective. Here's this being who is, for all intents and purposes, a part of you, but who is struggling to no longer be a part of you. Wyndham exaggerates the "not part of you" aspect of it by making the kids odd, leading to their being shunned by the provincial villagers; "not one of you" is thus made literal. He also exaggerates the power displayed; interfamily power struggles are the hallmarks of puberty, Wyndam has simply once again taken the concept to a logical extremity. His kids are telepaths, psychokinetics, sociopaths; their goal is to take over the world (and of course each generation thinks the generation below it is going to destroy the planet; nothing new there). This is what makes Wyndham's books so great, and through strong source material and a strong adaptation, it's also what makes Rilla's film endure-- this may be a horror movie, with weird glowing kids'-eyes and the roots of evil and all that hokum, but the horror that lies at its heart is all too real, and (from a Western perspective, anyway) universal. And-- let's face it-- thirty-five years later, even Superman had a problem stopping these kids. ****
January 3, 2008

Review Of The Damned

I saw both movies in a movie theater when I was a kid. I remember loving both. When I saw they were released on one DVD I jumped at the chance to buy it. I was slightly apprehensive about how much I'd enjoy them because I've learned that some movies that I really enjoyed as a kid I don't find very entertaining as an adult.
Yet, I loved both movies again. Very dark stories, well acted, well directed. You should get this DVD if you're thinking of it. You'll be glad you did. May 13, 2007

Incredible double feature

I first saw the 1995 version of Village of the Damned when it first came back and really enjoyed it. It was just something I had never seen before and I thought that the children were incredibly freaky and that the story was very interesting and one that I wanted to know more about.. like who wrote it and where they got the idea from. After doing a little research on the Internet I discovered that it was based on a book by John Wyndam and that there had been an original version back in the 60's, so of course I jumped at the chance to check both out to see how different they were compared to the '95 movie. I wasn't disappointed!

This DVD features the original 1960 version of Village of the Damned and it's 1963 'sequel' Children of the Damned. Two incredibly classic films that you won't want to miss if you are a fan of original horror and science fiction films. Both are beautifully shot and have an eerie tone to them, especially VotD because of the likeness in the children, their white-blonde hair and glowing eyes. The second movie is the weaker of the two but still worth watching as it puts a new twist on the original story and film. The children are not similar in appearance to each other, but come from all around the world (different nationalities) and come together for a pretty violent showdown in an old abandoned church building where the government is set to destroy them because of the powers they have.

I highly recommend these movies, you won't be disappointed! April 24, 2007

Two classic movies

Two essential John Wyndham adaptations. Village of the Damned is a good movie, and pays credit to the original story. Children of the Damned is not as much a sequel as it as a new twist to the same story, but in any case is well worth seeing. One should also include the movie Day of the Triffids based on another book by John Wyndham. January 3, 2007

"You are thinking of a brick wall. You are thinking of a brick wall.."

Despite having a name that sounds like a German-Japanese dinosaur movie and a drastically reduced budget after MGM got nervous over the possible reaction from the Catholic Legion of Decency, Wolf Rilla managed to deliver a genuine low-budget classic that makes light of its limitations in Village of the Damned. Surprisingly faithful to the source (The Midwich Cuckoos) despite the many changes, it's another variation on novelist's John Wyndham's big theme, the battle for supremacy between two species - in this case the human race and the intellectually superior children spawned after a mysterious alien intervention that sees a small village rendered unconscious in a memorably staged sequence that combines the mundane with the inexplicable. Rather than exploiting the premise and the dangerous telekinetic abilities of the children for shock effects (although they do demonstrate them in a couple of memorable sequences), for the most part the film is as much concerned with the twin dilemmas of whether the children are a potential boon or a threat to the human race and of finding a way to defeat or destroy an enemy that not only knows what you're thinking but which is still a part of your own family. With an excellent screenplay, tightly constructed and imaginatively directed with a great ending - "You are thinking of a brick wall. You are thinking of a brick wall.." - it holds up remarkably well nearly a half century on.

Children of the Damned is morally and politically more ambitious still, exploring the notion that humans are perhaps far worse than the cuckoos in their midst. Unfortunately it's also very dull, good performances from Alfred Burke and Ian Hendry notwithstanding. There's no real involvement or forward momentum, and it exists in a vacuum - the events in the first film are never even acknowledged. But the saving grace of the Region 1 DVD at least is screenwriter John Briley's audio commentary (neither commentary is included on the foreign issues), dealing with the themes of the movie as well as taking detailed diversions into the effect of the blacklist on Hollywood, the exile of US talent to Britain and the artistic and political freedom that MGM UK's sheep farming activities gave them! (There's also a brief harbinger of things to come with a photo of Gandhi overlooking Indian politicians debating killing the children in the film: Briley would go on to write Attenborough's biopic.)
December 4, 2006

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