 | Beware the eyes, that paralyze!!!.
rating: 5
In the English village of Midwich, everyone has fallen into a deep sleep for several hours in the middle of the day. Months later, every woman capable of bearing children has been pregnant and given birth and every child looks similar to each other. Same color hair, same penetrating eyes and same idea , which is to kill everyone that gets in their way. Village Of The Damned was a great classic sci/fi horror film from the 60's, the film was quite haunting and suspenseful and the acting and characters were brilliant. The children themselves were very creepy as their eyes glow when they are angered. Martin Stephens as George Sanders boy is particularly good as he looks and speaks with such class and yet has the conscience of a cold-blooded, calculated killer. Sanders is also very good in his role as a man torn between bridging the field of knowledge with the unknown and protecting mankind from alien harm, I found this to be quite an enjoyable film and I felt the inclusion of the other towns around the world with similar incidents and the reports back on how they dealt with it to be quite ingenious. A great British science fiction film and certainly one of the more thought-provoking ones around.
This double feature also comes with the sequel Children Of The Damned, although not quite as good as the original Children of the Damned is still one of the best sequels ever made and comes very close to equaling to original. The sets are absolutely mind blowing, particularly the church scenes and the entire movie is very well shot with outstanding camera movement. The acting is superb as you would expect from a British horror movie, the story was about a Psychologist Tom Llewellyn and geneticist David Neville who have found the smartest child in the world: Paul Looran a British boy. However they soon realize that 5 other children around the world are of the same intelligence and even the same entity. It Seems that these kids have unstoppable psychic abilities so they can read minds. These children are brought to England but when the various governments become worried about losing control of the children, the children band together and take over an abandoned church. The film is basically a sequel in name only and no true history is given of the children, unlike the previous film. The film has too many unanswered questions and shows the kids as merely intelligent pawns who think first and kill later and the ending was a cop out but I still thought it was entertaining and is definitely worth seeing, overall I definitely recommend this awesome double feature for those who like old classic British horror films with a spooky atmosphere and intelligent storyline.
|
Creepy glowy-eyed kids take over village, film at 11
rating: 4
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. ****
|
Review Of The Damned
rating: 4
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.
|
Incredible double feature
rating: 5
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!
|
Two classic movies
rating: 4
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.
|
|
