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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1960s
    Movies - 1960s Movies - V 3 Mins Read

    Village Of The Damned (1960)

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    This low-budget, well-made and chilling film – based on John Wyndham’s novelΒ The Midwich Cuckoos – proves beyond a doubt that good movies need not be costly.Β There isn’t a wasted motion in this story about an English village terrorised by strange children who use unearthly powers to control the adults around them.

    The English village of Midwich is subject to an alien intrusion and for some hours is cut off from the rest of the country.Β A hemispherical field around the village causes all within it to fall into a deep sleep.

    villageofdamned_4Several months later all the female population of the village of childbearing age become pregnant. The children they give birth to are golden-haired, communicate telepathically, and can enforce their will on the village adults.

    As the children grow, their powers increase. Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) proves that what one of them learns, they all learn, by teaching his son to open a puzzle box.

    The children move together in groups, outcast from the other village children, and their strange, precise, cold way of talking and their staring eyes causes nervousness in the village adults.

    It turns out these are not the only group of odd children – the phenomenon is occurring worldwide.

    The stakes are increased when it is discovered that the Russians have blown up a village in which similar children were born, and the men of Midwich, angered by mysterious deaths in the village (caused by the children), march upon the school in which the children are now living.

    villageofthedamned_625

    David, who has become the main spokesman for the children, orders his father to get them away. Zellaby, by then the only adult the children trust at all and whose lessons the children enjoy, agrees, but he comes to the next lesson with dynamite in his briefcase.

    The mental shield he puts up – a simple image of a brick wall – is only sufficient to withstand the combined assault of the children for a few minutes, but it is enough.

    An inferior 1995 remake – now transposed to California – starred Kirstie Alley and Christopher Reeve. It’s a so-so John Carpenter film, far below his very best work.

    villageofdamned1Professor Gordon Zellaby
    George Sanders
    Anthea Zellaby

    Barbara Shelley
    David Zellaby

    Martin Stephens
    Alan Bernard

    Michael Gwynne
    Doctor Willers

    Laurence Naismith
    General Leighton

    John Phillips
    Sir Edgar Hargraves

    Richard Vernon
    Mrs Harrington

    Jenny Laird
    Harrington

    Richard Warner
    James Pawle

    Thomas Heathcote
    Janet Pawle

    Charlotte Mitchell
    Dr Carlisle

    Keith Pyott
    Professor Smith

    John Stuart

    Director
    Wolf Rilla

    Video

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