<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Village of the Damned
Release Date	December 7, 1960
Genre	Horror
Director	Wolf Rilla
Screenwriter	Stirling Silliphant John Wyndham (Characters) Ronald Kinnoch Wolf Rilla
Stars	George Sanders Barbara Shelley Michael Gwynn Laurence Naismith Richard Warner Jenny Laird Sarah Long Thomas Heathcote Charlotte Mitchell
Studio	MGM

The classic Village of the Damned (1960) was faithfully adapted from British SF author John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos by Stirling Silliphant, director Wolf Rilla, and producer Ronald Kinnoch (writing as George Barclay). Silliphant’s career ranged from such highs as his Oscar-winning work on In the Heat of the Night (1967) to lows like Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite (1975).

Plot

The village of Midwich is cut off, and its inhabitants rendered insensate, by an intangible force with a clearly defined perimeter, which vanishes hours later as abruptly as it came. Soon, every female of childbearing years, even the virgins, is found to be pregnant, including Anthea (Barbara Shelley), the wife of the initially delighted Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders).

The babies develop rapidly, both inside and out of the womb, appearing normal at birth except for unusual eyes, hair, and nails. Anthea involuntarily puts her hand into scalding water after she gives her son, David, a bottle that is too hot, and Gordon uses a puzzle-box to show his brother-in-law, Major Alan Bernard (Michael Gwynn), that what one child learns, they all know.

Gordon learns that other groups of similar children around the world died or were killed, except for one in the USSR. Gen. Leighton (John Phillips) wants to lock up the Midwich group, but Gordon intervenes and is given a year to teach and study the children; Martin Stephens, who played another unnerving child in The Innocents (1961), leads them as the more mature David.

The children can read minds and control others with their intense eyes, so that when his brother is compelled to crash after narrowly missing a child with his car, James Pawle (Thomas Heathcote) menaces them with a shotgun and is forced to turn it on himself. The Soviet group is massacred, but a lynch mob in Midwich is dispersed as its leader is made to set himself on fire.

Alan is temporarily blinded in a confrontation with the children, who are obviously a de facto invasion force that has been implanted by unseen aliens. David demands that Gordon help them escape and disperse, but he brings a briefcase full of dynamite to the school and shields his mind with an image of a brick wall until the time-bomb detonates, killing him and the children.

Related Films

The sequel, Children of the Damned (1964), was written by John Briley, the future Oscar winner for Gandhi (1982), and directed by Anton M. Leader, a veteran of episodic television. It depicts the efforts of a pair of UNESCO scientists, Drs. Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) and David Neville (Alan Badel), to cope with a sextet of similar children gathered from around the world.

Largely a rehash of the original, it differs by treating its lethal tots more sympathetically, as misunderstood misfits—or perhaps more, as a scientist claims that their cells are advanced by a million years. Gathered in an abandoned church, they claim their purpose is, Christ-like, “to be destroyed,” which they are when a ring of munitions surrounding them is accidentally triggered.

John Carpenter displayed no such pretensions in his Village of the Damned (1995), which sadly marked Christopher Reeve’s last feature film before the riding accident that paralyzed him that same year. Also featuring Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, and Mark Hamill, it followed the basic storyline of the 1960 version, but was considerably more explicit in its scenes of violence.