DVD review: Village of the Damned (1960)

So young, so innocent, so deadly!

Based on John Wyndham's classic novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, as well as the age-old adage that "there's nowt as creepy as kids", the 1960 sci-fi chiller Village of the Damned has been collected into a double DVD pack with its thematic sequel, Children of the Damned (1963).

The story is simple and enticing. Mysterious moppets are born to the womenfolk of a small English town following an unexplained blackout. The children - all blond, all creepy little sods - grow up at an accelerated rate, exhibit psychic powers and soon begin wiping out anyone who annoys them.

Being unruly kids, that means pretty much everyone over the age of ten...

The stoic George Sanders stars as the grim faced professor, and "father" of one of the boys, who figures out the brat's other-worldly origins. The finale (which I'll try not to spoil) still proves to be quite a shocker, both for the way that Sanders deals with the children, and the method he chooses.

The movie borrows heavily from the buttoned-down English mode of intellectual menace as typified by films like The Day The Earth Caught Fire and the Quatermass series, and makes for a wonderful relic of a more stiff upper lip era - especially the scene where the doctor, having just delivered a baby, promptly sparks up a fag. Whereas an American movie (such as John Carpenter's limp remake) might respond to the supernatural shenanigans that follow with shouting and urgent action, the terribly English response on display here is to look a tad peeved - though always unflustered. It's the end of the world, Daily Mail style.

The sequel, Children of the Damned, released in 1963, is an even more curious beast. Making no reference to the first movie, it revolves around a new batch of spooky mind-reading kids - this time born around the world and brought to London for study. They've lost the matching bleached hairdos, and the film this time switches allegiance and makes the children the sympathetic party - unwilling lab rats who are no more aware of their origin or purpose than their scientific captors.

Village of the Damned is up there with the best of post-war British genre cinema, and the sequel - while less successful - is still a cut above the usual sci-fi potboilers of the day.

This double pack is available only through HMV. Despite the lack of special features, the quality of the movies alone makes it a worthy purchase for vintage SF fans.