Village of the Damned (1960 film)

Infobox Film
name = Village of the Damned


caption = Village of the Damned movie poster.
director = Wolf Rilla
producer = Ronald Kinnoch
eproducer =
aproducer =
writer = novel:
John Wyndham
Screenplay:
Stirling Silliphant
Wolf Rilla
Ronald Kinnoch (as George Barclay)
starring = George Sanders
Barbara Shelley
Martin Stephens
Michael Gwynn
music = Ron Goodwin
cinematography = Geoffrey Faithfull
editing = Gordon Hales
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
released = December 7 1960 US
runtime = 77 min.
country = UK
awards = 1961 Nominated Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation
language = English
budget = $200,000
preceded_by =
followed_by = Children of the Damned
amg_id = 1:52775
imdb_id = 0054443

"Village of the Damned" is an English science fiction film made in 1960 by German director Wolf Rilla. The film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel "The Midwich Cuckoos" by John Wyndham. The lead role of Professor Gordon Zellaby was played by George Sanders.

* A 1963 sequel was called "Children of the Damned".
* There was also a remake in 1995 by John Carpenter, starring Christopher Reeve.

This film was #92 on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments".

ynopsis

As the movie opens, all of the inhabitants (including the animals) of the English village of Midwich suddenly fall unconscious, and anyone entering the village also loses consciousness. The military arrives and establishes a cordon, and sends in a man wearing a biological isolation suit, but he too falls unconscious and is pulled back by a safety rope. The man awakens, reporting a cold sensation just before passing out. At nearly that very moment, the villagers regain consciousness, seeming otherwise unaffected. The incident is referred to as a "time-out," and no cause is determined.

About two months later, all women and girls of childbearing age who were in the affected area are discovered to be pregnant, sparking many accusations of infidelity and premarital sex. The accusations fade as the extraordinary nature of the pregnancies is discovered. All of the women give birth on the same day, and the doctor doing the bulk of the deliveries reports on the unusual appearance of the children, who all have unusual scalp hair texture and colour (pale blond, almost white). As they grow, it becomes clear that they also have a powerful telepathic bond with one another. They can tell each other anything that they see from great distances. As one learns something, so do the rest.

Three years later, a village representative, Gordon (George Sanders), attends a meeting with British Intelligence to discuss the children. There he learns that Midwich was not the only place affected, and followup investigations had revealed similar phenomena in other areas of the world.

* In a township in northern Australia, thirty infants were born in one day but all died within 10 hours of birth.
* In an Inuit community in Canada, there were ten children born. Fair-haired children born to their kind violated their taboos, and all of them were killed.
* In Irkutsk, Russia, the men murdered all of the children "and" their mothers.
* In the mountains of the north-western Soviet Union, the children survived and were being educated to the highest possible level by the state.

Although only three years old, they are physically the equivalent of children four times their age. Their behaviour has become increasingly unusual and striking. They dress impeccably, always walk as a group, speak in a very adult way, are very well-behaved... but they show no conscience or love and demonstrate a coldness to others. All of this has had the effect of most of the townspeople fearing and being repulsed by them. They begin to exhibit the power to read minds when expedient, or to force people to do things against their will, the latter accompanied by an alien glow in the children's eyes. There have been a number of villagers' deaths since they were born, many considered unusual (such as the drowning of an expert swimmer). It is the opinion of some that the children are responsible. This is later confirmed when they are shown making a man crash his car into a wall, killing him and - later - forcing another to shoot himself.

Gordon, comparing the children's resistance to reasoning with a brick wall, attempts to teach the children while hoping to learn from them, and the children are all placed in a separate building where they will learn and live. While the children continue to exert their will, Gordon learns that the Soviets have used nuclear weapons to destroy their village containing the mutant children. As the children's evil nature becomes more and more clear to Gordon, he takes a hidden time-bomb to what he expects to a session with the children, and tries to block their awareness of the bomb by visualizing a brick wall. His "son" David scans his mind - showing an emotion (astonishment) for the first time - "You're not thinking of atomic energy, you're thinking of ... a brick wall!" The children exert force to try to break down Gordon's mental wall to learn what he is hiding from them. They discover his actions just a moment before the bomb detonates.

The final scene is ambiguous and could be interpreted as the survival of the children in non-corporeal form. Their glowing eyes appear in the debris of the flaming building and move out of shot.

Production

The film was originally an American picture when preproduction began in 1957. Ronald Colman was contracted for the leading role, but MGM shelved the project, deeming it inflammatory and controversial because of the sinister depiction of virgin birth. Colman died in May 1958 -- by strange coincidence, his widow, actress Benita Hume, married actor George Sanders in 1959, and Sanders took the role meant for Colman.

The film was shot on location in the village of Letchmore Heath, near Watford, approximately 12 miles (20 kilometres) north of London. Local buildings such as The Three Horseshoes Pub and Aldenham School, were used during filming.

The blond wigs that the children wore were padded to give the impression that they had abnormally large heads.

External links

* [http://thethunderchild.com/Movies/1960/VillageoftheDamned/PhotoTour.html See Letchmore Heath then and now] .
*imdb title|id=0054443|title=Village of the Damned (1960).