Village of the Damned Movie Review

Wolf Rilla's vintage 1960 chiller, Village of the Damned, based on John Wyndham's novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, was shot in creepy black and white and focused on the efforts of an unlikely married couple to humanize their weird offspring. (Well, if you were 27 years old, gorgeous, brilliant, and sensitive like Barbara Shelley, would 54-year-old GEORGE SANDERS be on YOUR short list of husbands?) The opening shots are beautifully done; the inhabitants of the quiet village of Midwich simply fall asleep mid-activity. The military gets wind of the unexpected afternoon siesta and, predictably, botch the investigation. Nine months later, any woman who's capable of bearing an infant delivers a precocious baby who quickly evolves into a genius demon child with straight blonde hair and spooky eyes. Spookiest of the bunch is Martin Stephens as David, Shelley's son. Stephens made a dozen films in his 12-year career, becoming progressively less frightening as he entered his teens, but luckily for horror fans, Village of The Damned and 1961's The Innocents were filmed when Stephens was still at his blood-curdling best. You didn't need to have a bunch of great child actors with Stephens as the ringleader. In the film's finest moments, the grown-ups fight a losing war of nerves with their cool, well-spoken, would-be conquerors. The smash status of Rilla's film is partly due to the universal mutual distrust between adults and kids, but mostly because he stuck to basics and kept things simple. Village of the Damned is well worth a look on video, especially for 10- or 11-year-old fantasists who'd love to terrify their caretakers into doing everything they say with the help of one cold lethal stare.

1960 78m/B GB George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens, Laurence Naismith, Michael C. Goetz, Michael Gwynn, John Phillips, Richard Vernon, Jenny Laird, Richard Warner, Thomas Heathcote, Charlotte Mitchell, John Stuart, Bernard Archard; D: Wolf Rilla; W: Wolf Rilla, Stirling Silliphant, George Harley; C: Geoffrey Faithfull. VHS, LV