Village of the Damned

The best way to watch this movie is ignorantly. Go to Netflix now, put the movie at the top of your queue and watch it when it arrives. Read about it later. If you enjoy sci-fi classics like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Them!"; if you love the Britishness of the Hammer horror pictures; if you prefer a well-told story, rich suspense, sympathetic characters and black-and-white photography to special effects, color and gore, you will want to see this film right away.

The movie begins in Midwich. We meet the scientist Gordon Zellaby having a telephone conversation. Mid-sentence he passes out. At the same moment, every single person and animal in town has passed out just as suddenly; some unknown force has put all the inhabitants of Midwich to sleep. When the army gets involved, we discover this force has precise boundaries. One soldier, after being lassoed around the waist, walks past the boundary, loses consciousness and immediately revives when his fellows pull him out of the infected area. A few hours later, this strange force disappears and everyone wakes up. The mystery remains unsolved for weeks, but it has a sequel. All Midwich women of childbearing age are unaccountably pregnant.

Watching this science-fiction movie paired with almost any modern one demonstrates how storytelling has devolved as special effects have advanced. It also demonstrates how one simple effect can be more memorable than a thousand complex ones. I happened to see this just before watching "The Forgotten" (2005), a stupid movie with expensive effects; but not of those expensive effects is as potent as this movie's signature device. When the blonde-haired Midwich children wreak psychic havoc, the picture freezes and their eyes glow. That inexpensive trick shot is worth the millions blown on "The Forgotten."

Another nice effect: George Sanders. He plays the hero, Gordon Zellaby, a scientist who becomes a dubious father to one of the Midwich freaks. Sanders plays rogues in almost every other movie, but here he is sweet-natured and convincingly so; he betrays not a shadow of his usual cynicism. Were this his only surviving film, one would think he was born to play kindly old men. The excellent cast has one other outstanding performance by Martin Stephens, who plays Sanders's cold-hearted "son." Would you be surprised to learn his voice was dubbed by a female actress specializing in children? I was surprised to learn it wasn't. That is the boy's own eerily precise diction.

Special praise must also go to the director and photographer, Wolf Rilla and Geoffrey Faithful, who give the movie the detached air of a documentary. The script, credited to Stirling Silliphant, George Barclay and Rilla, is an excellent adaptation of a fine book, "The Midwich Cuckoos" by John Beynon Harris. Fans of this movie will want to read it. The book has many enjoyable details that were necessarily and wisely cut from the adaptation. To note one difference, the children in the movie are psychically linked: what one knows they all know. But in the book, the boys are psychically linked with the boys, the girls with the girls; but there is little or no link between the two sexes. The reasons for this are fascinating.

I haven't seen the John Carpenter remake, and I don't want to. What would the ideal remake of this film look like? It would look like the original: black-and-white, set in the late fifties, cast with Brits and scripted with the same restraint. Maybe modern resources could add a piquant touch or two; it would be amusing to see all those sheep fall asleep in the opening scene. Oh, and that awful model shot of the school could be replaced. Otherwise, we have the film we want, so why remake it?

Village of the Damned is a strongly compelling Science-Fiction highlight and easily of the eeriest movies I ever saw. Although it's a very modest and simply made production, the scary-effect of this film is a lot more effective than some of its big-budgeted colleagues. On a random day, the entire English village of Midwich falls into a trance-like sleep. Completely inexplicably, they awake again seemly normal but two months later it appears that every fertile woman in town got pregnant on the day of the blackout. The newborns show a strange resemblance in looks and – what is even more bizarre – they're telekinetic! Due to their amazing intelligence and emotionless behavior, they form a huge threat and freak out the entire little town. `Village of the Damned' is loyally adapted from John Wyndham's novel `The Midwich Cuckoos'. Throughout the whole film, you don't get much explanation and, as a viewer, you're forced to guess at the mystery's origin. Although highly unlikely, the events in Midwich really are alarming and make you feel uncomfortable. This effect is reached through solid tension and macabre atmosphere much more than through special effects. The eerily lit eyes of the ‘children' are the only real effects but they cause a lot more fear than gallons of blood ever could! Village of the Damned also owes a lot of its power to a terrific casting job. Essentially to achieve the obtained scary effect were the children. Well, they did a good job! The offspring looks alienated almost naturally and their appearance literally chills your blood. The concerned adult in Village of the Damned is excellently played by George Sanders. Sanders was a terrific and shamefully overlooked English class actor who committed suicide in the early 70's. He has a got a few other delightful horror movies on his repertoire like `Psychomania' and `Doomwatch' (both are some of his last films). Village of the Damned is a highly recommended picture that'll certainly keep you close to the screen till the end-credits role. Equally recommended is the (unofficial) sequel called `Children of the Damned'. There's a bit more background in that film, as well as some more explicit horror sequences. The 1995 remake by John Carpenter, however, is rather unexciting and one of the most redundant films ever made. Stick to the original and be scared!

I originally saw this when I was in junior high on late night TV. Those glowing eyes gave me nightmares for weeks! Seeing it now MANY years later, it still scares me. It's very quiet but very spooky. No real on-screen violence, no special effects (with the exception of the eyes) and all talk but never dull. The film is intelligent, doesn't talk down to the audience and handles the subject matter in a very realistic manner. Most people in horror films act like idiots--not in this one! Also some superb acting by George Sanders, Barbara Shelley (as his wife) and those creepy little kids (especially Martin Stephens) helps a lot. Proves a quiet little, goreless film can scare you silly. AT ALL COSTS, AVOID THE 1995 REMAKE!!!!!!! Carpenter's a great director, but you can't remake a great film. See this one!!

Village of the Damned is a very well-made thriller that seems to have been overlooked because of the sheer magnitude of its competition - Psycho. Both of these films are testaments to the idea that low budgets are very capable of producing great films. It is not the size of the budget that matters, it is the skill of the filmmakers and the actors. Village of the Damned makes use of a variety of very easily done but also very effective special effects, such as the boundary across which all people and animals lose consciousness, the creepy eyes on those kids, and their hypnotic powers.

The discussion of the exact same phenomenon happening to a few remote towns all over the world does a lot to show what these kids can do, and it increases the dramatic tension of the film as a whole. Cheaply made, but also very well made because a lot of thought was obviously put into it, Village of the Damned is a timeless thriller, even in black and white. When you watch a movie like this, if you are the kind of person who is so superficial about your movies that you refuse to watch black and white films, keep in mind that black and white photography REQUIRES good acting, to put it in the immortal words of Orson Welles. You can't have black and white photography and bad acting, the film would never work. Village of the Damned takes black and white photography and fills it with excellent acting, a fascinating story, and good direction that makes me wonder why this was the only film that Wolf Rilla ever directed.

Village of the damned is a tense, well made film. It keeps you on the edge of your seat right the way through, and the ending is brilliant. It benefits from the quaint setting of an isolated English town, and the acting is largely pretty good, especially that of the creepy children.

This 1960 film is much better than the 1995 American remake, which went for gore and loud bangs rather than tension.