#village of the damned 1960

[fanofspooky]

Scream Queen - Barbara Shelley

Requested by @pluralzalpha

[ducklikethedaffy2]

Village of the Damned

Today's inktober prompt was Alien and I am very proud of how these creepy kids turned out!

[schlock-luster-video]

On June 15, 1961, Village of the Damned debuted in Australia.

[classichorrorblog]

Village Of The Damned (1960)

[bwallure]

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) dir. Wolf Rilla

[georgeromeros]

Village of the Damned (1960) dir. Wolf Rilla

[johnny-dynamo]

"VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED" (1960) Dir.: Wolf Rilla - Póster francés / French poster

[mudwerks]

(via The Grim Gallery: Exhibit 4674)

Village of the Damned (1960)

[weirdlookindog]

Barbara Shelley and Martin Stephens in Village of the Damned (1960)

[theoddsideofme]

[letterboxd-loggd]

Village of the Damned (1960) Wolf Rilla

July 5th 2024

[cinematitlecards]

"Village Of The Damned" (1960) Directed by Wolf Rilla (Horror/Sci-Fi) . . "Village Of The Damned" (1995) Directed by John Carpenter (Horror/Sci-Fi/Thriller)

[scifipinups]

Barbara Shelley Village of the Damned (1960)

[schlock-luster-video]

On March 19, 1962, Village of the Damned debuted in Sweden.

[splatteronmywalls]

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)

One day, everyone in the English village of Midwich falls unconscious.  The army comes to investigate, but a few hours later everyone wakes up, and they seem fine.  Except that shortly thereafter, every woman capable of bearing a child…becomes pregnant!  This causes quite a stir, as some of the younger women insist that they’ve never had sex!  Some other women face accusations of infidelity.  Also pregnant is Anthea, the wife of a certain Professor George Zellaby. 

The pregnancies proceed at an accelerated pace.  Anthea is freaking out, because the pregnancy is obviously not normal.  “Where does it come from?” she demands.  “I’m afraid.  I’m so afraid.”  The various children are born, and each has blonde hair, weird hair follicles, and thinner than normal nails.  Anthea seems to settle down a bit, but over the next few years the children grow at, again, an accelerated pace.  They are extremely intelligent, and what one learns, the rest know as well.  Also, sometimes their eyes glow and they can control people!

The children grow some more.  They mostly hang out with each other (there are a dozen of them), and the Zellaby kid, David, is played by the same young man who we’ll later see as Miles in “The Innocents” (1961).  (He stopped acting in 1966.)  The townspeople are freaked out by the kids, but Zellaby wants to nurture their intelligence.  Zellaby’s brother-in-law, Alan, tells him, “People, especially children, aren’t measured by their IQ.  What’s important about them is whether they’re good or bad, and these children are bad.”  Zellaby replies that the children must be taught to be moral, “and with their intellect that should be simple.”  They head off to a meeting in London.  Anthea goes to David and attempts to help him dress, but he brushes her off.  “Don’t you like me to help you, David?”  He cuts his fingers, and she tends to him, but he continues to brush her off and leaves.

At the meeting in London, Zellaby learns that three other locations experienced an incident similar to Midwich.  At one location, all the children died soon after birth.  At the second and third locations, the men killed all the children, or all the children and women.  At the third location, in the Soviet Union, the children survived, and are now being educated “at the highest level.”  (They are obviously being turned into dirty commies.)  Different scientists propose theories about the children.  One dude, along with Zellaby, suggests that they were created by pulses of energy directed at the earth.  A general in attendance wants to round up and contain the children, but Zellaby begs for one year to teach and train the children.  The government minister in attendance agrees.

Back in Midwich, Zellaby begins to teach the children advanced topics, like relativity.  They admit to their growing abilities, but they refuse to answer questions about their own nature or where they’re from.  The children all move into the schoolhouse.  Anthea helps David pack, and at the end she tries to hug him, but he merely says, “Thank you,” and walks away from her.  As she’s walking him to the schoolhouse, a car almost hits one of the other children!  The children’s eyes glow at the driver, and he gets back in his car and drives into a wall!  At the following inquest, Anthea covers up for the children, but the dead man’s brother wants justice!  Outside, later, Zellaby, Anthea, and Alan see that man setting an ambush for the children with his shotgun.  Zellaby convinces the man to leave, but the children notice him fleeing.  They use their mind powers, and he shoots himself.  Zellaby and the others are powerless to stop them.

Zellaby eventually receives news that the Russians have dropped a nuke on their own town of children because they lost control of them.  Alan has to go to London to attend a meeting about the children, but on the way he sees an angry mob of the town’s men!  They attempt to burn down the children’s schoolhouse, but the kids use their mind powers to stop the men.  The ringleader is forced to burn himself to death.  Alan goes into the schoolhouse to admonish the children, but they scan his brain and learn about the other, nuked, kids.  David tells Alan, “You have to be taught to leave us alone.”  They place the adult in a comatose state.

Alan is recuperating at Zellaby’s house when Davis appears!  He wants to talk to Zellaby, but Anthea speaks to him first.  “David, why do you do these dreadful things?  Wherever it is that you come from, you’re part of us now.  Couldn’t you learn to live with us and help us live with you?”  David ignores her question and demands to speak with Zellaby.  David tells him that they need Zellaby’s help.  They (the children) need to separate, and they need Zellaby to make arrangements for them all to stay with different families across the countryside.  Zellaby says that he’ll need a few days to organize.  He’ll let them know the next time he goes to the schoolhouse for their lesson.

That day arrives.  Zellaby sends Anthea and Alan away.  He puts a bomb into a satchel and thinks of an actual wall to build up a mind fortress.  He heads to the schoolhouse and starts to deliver a lesson on atomic energy, but David demands to know what preparations Zellaby has made.  Zellaby tries to put them off, but the children focus their mind powers on him!  Zellaby imagines his mental wall, but we see it start to crumble under the children’s attack.  Zellaby actually manages to hold out for a few minutes, but in the end the children all look at the satchel.  Then it blows up. 

Anthea, who earlier sensed that something was wrong, has driven back, just in time to see the school house burn down.  The end.

This was good, a true classic of horror cinema.  It’s short and tightly-constructed, at times with an almost documentary feel.  Plenty has been said about this film, so I’ll just focus on maybe one aspect of the movie that doesn’t draw as much attention as the creepy kids or the Cold War paranoia: the women of Midwich.  This is very much a male-centered movie, even though it’s the women of the village who are forced to bear the children of unknown beings.  There are certainly aspects of body horror here, as conveyed briefly through Anthea’s turmoil, but most of that is brushed away after the children are born.  However, the general silence of the women continues.  In the rest of the movie, we glimpse maybe two other mothers of the strange children, in passing scenes that are mostly about Zellaby, but we do play plenty of attention to the aggrieved men of the village.  Only at the very end does Anthea get to address David in full, asking if there’s any way they can find to live together.  The alien kid ignores her, but that was certainly the promise of another story: a situation where the women of the village tried to raise the children.