Village of the Damned (1960)

 

Village of the Damned (1960)

 

This is a remarkably understated film given that its Themes are Blasphemy, Perversion, Sexual Subjugation to an uncaring Secret Master, and Mass Child Murder. From beginning to end, it’s creepy, but, very deftly, it barely disturbs its own deceptively placid surface.

 

Novelist John Wyndham, who wrote in multiple genres and under multiple names (each a variant of his given name John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest SF Authors, but didn’t really much like that Genre, or at least the Genre he saw as expressed in the hands of others. He chose to call his work “Logical Fantasy.” His greatest success was the 1951 novel “Day of the Triffids” a slim volume but still a hugely ambitious work that repeatedly overwhelmed Film-makers. The 1963 feature film, a mere 93 minutes long, was entertaining but both unfaithful and shallow. Later TV adaptations, 1981 & 2009, were also troubled, but at least the 1981 version gave it the good college try.

 

Easily his second most popular was the 1957 novel “The Midwich Cuckoos,” the basis of this film. Though both books shared End-of-the-World themes, but the latter had fewer Characters, covered a shorter time-frame, and restrained its setting almost entirely to a single town, making the film adaptation a lot more feasible. Despite this, Wyndham believed unfilmable, presumably because of its then-and-still-shocking Themes. He was almost, but only almost, proved right.

 

MGM had wanted to make the film in the USA the same year as its publication, but the script by Sterling Silliphant raised the ire of the then all-powerful (and these days mercilessly mocked) Catholic-run National Legion of Decency (NLD). They just couldn’t tolerate a film that even mentioned things like unwed pregnancies, patricide, and infanticide, never mind the mockery of the Immaculate Conception (hell, what did you expect from a group that condemned “Miracle of Thirty-Fourth Street” (1934) as endorsing immoral lifestyles?). Even though casting had already started, the project was put on hiatus and lay dormant for years.

 

(Ironically, with the NLD now only a memory, the film reviewers at the US Conference of Bishops not only no longer object, but in fact praise, the eventually-made film, “Director Wolf Rilla builds the suspense to considerable lengths without recourse to special effects -- except the alien light in the children's eyes. Menacing atmosphere and some stylized violence.”)

 

The film finally got off the ground by returning the story to England, outside of NLD influence. MGM hired the above-mentioned Director Rilla who with Producer Ronald Kinnoch (who felt it necessary to use a pseudonym), tweaked the script, changing some of the action to suit a smaller budget, but still broke the Taboos. Reading about the Censorship problems after seeing the film I am amazed because there’s no sense of the Filmmakers awkwardly tip-toeing around things. They miraculously obeyed Censorship and still got to their points across pretty straight-forwardly.

 

Rilla’s aesthetic was wholly consistent with Wynham’s goal of Logical Fantasy. “What interested me was not to make a fantastic film but a film that was very real. To take an ordinary situation and inject extraordinary events into it."

 

What resulted was wholly remarkable, but MGM was still skittish. It seems that now the challenge of marketing it was weighing on them at least as much as the NLD. This Horror film not only broke Taboos, but Genre rules by having few sensational elements, and it got shelved again.

 

It was saved by a gap that appeared in the release schedule of other productions, but even when film was finally allowed to be seen by the public (it was released in England before the US), there was almost nothing invested in its promotion, not even a press showing.

 

Then something remarkable happened, word-of-mouth brought long queues in England outside the one West End cinema after showing it for less than a week. MGM didn’t ignore that response, and before the US release had spent three times the initial budget on a lurid publicity campaign, "Beware the Stare that Paralyzes!" Made for a mere $82,000, distribution and publicity made that number balloon to $300,000, and it grossed more than $1.5 million during its initial release in England and the U.S, an astonishing sum for 1960.

 

After such a success, one would imagine Director Rilla, already a Film-Veteran, would’ve been spring-boarded to a major career, but that was not to be. He subsequent out-put continued to be low-budget and very quickly sank into the Exploitation market. In barely more than a decade he quit film altogether for the hotel business in France. In 2003 he was quoted as saying, "I've made 27 films and this is the only one people remember."

 

When released, the film’s only recognizable star was George Sanders, he was under contract at the time and was cast against type. He typically played a Cad, but here he’s Gordon Zellaby, an honorable, respected, Humanistic Academic, happily married to a beautiful and much younger wife, played by Barbara Shelley, then a newcomer to movies. The couple enjoy a very comfortable, but childless, life until a completely inexplicable event alters their bucolic community of Midwich.

 

One day everyone in the town suddenly black out, and hours later, just as suddenly as they went under, they awaken. Most likely only a few would’ve even realized the was something amiss, except that the phenomenon had been noted by those outside the sphere of influence, and while it was going on, Authorities vainly struggled to get to the bottom of the mystery. A plane flies overhead and observes the bodies lying in the street. On a second, lower pass, by the same plane puts the pilot inside the Phenomena, he blacks out and crashes. Responding Police Officers march unknowingly into it, only to collapse the moment they cross the invisible line. Scientists can provide no answers except to determine the borders of the barrier. This opening, playing sedate normality against the arrival of the unexplained, is a masterpiece in of itself.

 

The Phenomena disappears and other than the unfortunate pilot, no one seems harmed. Investigations continue, and continue to be fruitless. Because of his credentials and family connections, Gordon is allowed closer to the day-to-day operations of the Military Command in charge of the Investigations than the rest of the town folk.

After two quiet months, there is the second event, all the village women who can bear children find they are pregnant (a total of twelve). Several claim not to have been with a man recently, some claim they are still virgins. Much credit must be given in how lucid the exposition is considering that the movie wasn’t permitted to use words like “pregnant” or “virgin.” There’s a scene where a husband who has been at sea for a year and he sits and seethes and we realize he has just discovered his wife's (unstated) pregnancy and suspects infidelity. In another a father and mother escort their very young daughter to a mobile clinic set up for the crisis; as the girl mounts the steps, her mother glances over her shoulder to see if any of the neighbors are looking. The Infection/Invasion/Insemination crosses all class boundaries, from an unwed Working-Class girl to Gordon’s Bourgeoisie Trophy-wife.

 

The children are all born healthy and look more like each other than their parents; their most notable feature is unnaturally blonde hair. The image of strangely similar blonde-haired children clustered together has been the most iconic of the film and screamed of the wholly insane Nazi Lebensborn Eugenics program (1935 – 1945). Director Rilla, whose family fled Nazi Germany in 1934, said later, "I don't think any of us were aware of it then, but of course now they remind you of the Hitler youth, blond-haired Aryan children and all that. I'm convinced that was an unintentional subtext; after all, the war was still fresh in our memories. But none of us had any idea of the impact it would make."

 

The children further disturb the community by displaying intellectual capacity beyond their chronological ages, being consistently unemotional, and seem to bond with each other but no one else. Gordon demonstrates evidence that if one is taught something, all learn it even if they weren't physically present. They have intense stares that seem to empower them to bend others to their will. There’s a wonderful sequence of delicious uncanniness, that conveys the how much fear the children evoke, during one the tots' birthdays. It’s is dialogue-free and the children are cold, emotionless, absorbed in something unknown and Alien, and utterly uninterested in to humans who can’t adjust to their presence.

 

Elsewhere in the world, there were reports of similar mass births. There are whispers this might be a form of Alien invasion. Gordon is informed that the other colonies of Super-Children are being exterminated one by one.

 

The inevitable breaking point comes when one of the children is nearly run down. It was an accident, the girl’s fault, and no one was hurt. But the children close ranks and stare down the motorist as their eyes devilishly glow (the glowing eyes are almost the film’s only special effect. Director Rilla objected to it as excessive, and it is not present in at least some prints.) The motorist falls under a hypnotic spell, gets back into his car, and deliberately drives into a wall, killing himself. Dozens of town’s people witness this.

 

When the Law doesn’t intervene against the children (who could it? They didn’t touch him, or speak to him, and they are children), the violence mounts. Escalating vigilante attacks on the children each end the attackers self-destruction.

 

By this time, all the children except one Gordon’s own son David (Martin Stephens) are already estranged their families and they now live under one roof. David just happens to be their ring-leader and Gordon is the only adult that has not ostracized them, he’s of above average intelligence so he is only “mere” Human they respect.

 

The escalation of the violence is too much for Gordon, but he realizes that it's up to him because calling in the Army will not help -- the children will only make the Troops to fire on each other.

 

He comes up with a plan, to bring a briefcase packed with explosives and a timer into the School House during a lesson. But the children have already demonstrated the ability to read minds. Gordon tries to block their intrusion by focusing his mind on an unrelated image, a brick wall, to shield his intents.

 

The children realize Gordon’s mind is not on the lesson. They probe him, and discover the brick wall. In a scene that has thrilled me as a viewer since childhood, they concentrate on him, and the audience sees the brick wall, superimposed across Gordon’s knit brow, start to crumble.

 

The stand-out performances are George Sanders’ Gordon and Martin Stephens’ David. Stephens went on the be a child star of significance, with a special gift for playing a Bad Child who doesn’t recognize Adult Authority or engage in age-appropriate behavior. His other most famous role would come in another Horror film, “The Innocents” (1961). As an adult, Stephen’s was interviewed about this role: "I quietly liked it... having these very adult qualities and having control over the adult. Imagine having that power - and I could taste a bit of that. You realise how powerless you are as a child."

 

This certainly wasn’t the first film about Evil Children, but I think I can safely say it’s the earliest that didn’t later degenerate into Camp because of over-the-top Melodramatics and quickly dated story-telling style. Its influence was huge, Evil Children becoming more-and-more popular among increasingly frustrated parents. The Beales first hit was only two-years in the future, “Love Me Do” (1962), and after that parenting got worse for everyone around the world.

 

It also spawned a solidly made, but inferior, but still interesting, sequel, “Children of the Damned” (1963) which switches the moral high ground. In the sequel, Humans are more dangerous than the Alien-Hybrid Super-Children.

 

By 1976, Evil Children had become a Horror stalwart with a gaggle of Horror films on that Theme released in that one year: “Island of the Damned” (aka “Would You Kill a Child?”), “The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane,” “The Omen,” etc.

 

The great Director John Carpenter did a remake in 1995 that was kinda terrible, best remembered now as Actor Christopher Reeve’s last film before a sporting accident paralyzed him from the neck down.

 

“Village of the …” trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqlozoXVxYM

“Children of the …” trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pJdejSLPFc