Cinema Macabre Issue 2: Kinky Nuns, Otherworldly Kids, Radioactive Jelly-Men And A Zombie Soldier Await You - Page 2

Check your beliefs at the door and slip into this notorious chapter in the nunsploitation canon, which, coincidentally, was the inspiration for Salma Hayek's character in From Dusk Till Dawn.

Ian Woolstencroft: Village of the Damned (1960)

John Wyndham’s classic story The Midwich Cuckoos is the source of this low budget British science fiction thriller.

The film gets off to a great start as all the inhabitants of the small village of Midwich are rendered unconscious by forces unknown. When they recover hours later it gradually becomes clear that some of the villagers have been changed — all the women of childbearing age are now mysteriously pregnant.

Months later they give birth to scarily intelligent children who develop far faster than normal human offspring. The kids soon manifest telepathic abilities and a scary group-mind mentality, something that doesn’t endear them to the villagers or the military.

With a running time of only 77 minutes the film doesn’t hang about, cranking up the tension as the children become more advanced as well as more threatening to anyone who gets in their way. Only George Sanders as one of the children’s “fathers” makes any connection with them.

The horror here is in the realisation that your child is not your own and I don’t mean the wife’s been getting more than a pint of semi-skimmed from the milkman. The origin of the children is deliberately vague and this just adds to the aura of otherworldly superiority the kids exhibit.

Sanders is brilliant as the scientist who at first sees these children as an opportunity for the human race to advance but gradually comes to realise that they don’t want to help the world, they want to conquer it. He’s ably supported by a strong cast of British character actors.

It’s the children who make the biggest impression though; with blond wigs and cold, expressionless faces, they are scarily intense and just plain alien. The leader of the group is played by Martin Stephens, who would go on the following year to star in the exceptional The Innocents. You may think he’s been dubbed here, and he has, but by himself. His dialogue was overdubbed later to make him sound more dispassionate. It works too, adding a coldness to the character that is most effective in the scenes with his mother, played to perfection by the lovely Barbara Shelley.

Wyndham hasn’t been particularly well served by the big screen and this, the first adaptation of his work, remains the best. It was followed by a sequel, Children of the Damned, three years later that was solidly entertaining but lacked the powerful presence of Sanders. John Carpenter made an ill-conceived remake in 1995 but thankfully it hasn’t tarnished the reputation of this little gem.

Article Author: Ian Woolstencroft

Ian Woolstencroft was brought up on a diet of John Wayne movies and Marvel Comics and still has a passion for both. Now as a blogcritic he finally understands what Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben meant when he said ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ …

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