Village Of The Damned (1960) When British novelist John Wyndham wasn't busy crafting stories about killer
plants taking over the world, he was busy crafting stories about killer brats
taking over the world. Village of the Damned is the movie version of his novel The Midwich Cuckoos and an interesting premise is let down by an abrupt and unsatisfying ending.
The small British town of Midwich is the center for a host of bizarre and
interesting events. First of all, all their cows have fainted. All the
people have fainted as well, but I thought seeing a bunch of cows lying down in
the fields was more entertaining than seeing people laying all over the town
like they were sleeping off a weekend drunk. It turns out that every living
thing in the vicinity of the town loses consciousness at exactly the same time,
regardless of what they're doing. That's why you've got a bus load of people
in a ditch, why this farmer drives around in circles until he runs into a tree,
and why the local bovines are taking a late morning siesta. A military guy named Alan, whose sister lives in the town takes off from work
early to go see her and her hubby and sees a cop pedaling toward Midwich. He
tells Alan that he has jumped on his 10 speed Schwinn to go find out what's
happened to the bus that was supposed to be coming from Midwich. I was
watching this with rapt attention. Let's see, they call their policemen
"bobbies" and they ride bikes? What a precious culture they must have in merry
ole England! I'll bet if you looked real close at this copper's bike, you'd
find that it had a banana seat!  Alan watches as the cop drives (I mean pedals) down the road to check out the
wrecked bus. The cop then suddenly faints, does an endo with his bike like he
was trying out for the X-Games and eats blacktop into unconsciousness.
Concerned for the officer's safety, Alan turns his car around (his bike must
have been in the shop) and heads back to HQ, deciding that checking on the cop
could wait until he could get all his military buddies together to go on a bike
ride to Midwich. What about Alan's sister who lives in Midwich? You could
tell by the exhaust he left in Midwich's direction that Al decided his sister
has got a husband who can take care of her and that he shouldn't horn in on
them, what with the town under siege by a mysterious force and all.
Alan returns with a whole gaggle of military and scientific types in tow.
They've got guys in hazmat suits and they've got the old miner's trick with the
canary going on. They have this little bird in a cage on the end of a really
long stick and they slowly move it in the direction of where everyone has
dropped over asleep and the canary falls asleep, too. They also send a guy in
with one of those special suits, but the only thing special about it was that
it prevented him from getting road rash when they dragged his limp body via a
rope attached to him, from beyond the border of this weird phenomena. Soon the canary comes alive, the cows wake up, and everyone else within the
sphere of the knock out gas wakes, not remembering what happened to them. I
should note that this didn't happen until after they had a dude fly his plane
over the village. The lower he got, the sleepier he got, and the next thing
you know everyone is diverting all the other air traffic away from Midwich.  The government types swarm into the town with their Geiger Counters, metal
detectors, and fuzz busters to see if they can dig up any dirt on this
unexplained happening. They can't, but later at a little briefing some of the
characters have with each other, one of them says that they've determined that
whatever happened was odorless, invisible, and was incapable of being measured
in any way by every instrument at their disposal. Sounds like you've cracked it
to me, by golly!
Thereafter, life in Midwich returns to normal, at least for about a month when
suddenly every woman of child bearing age is "late" and I think all you single
guys out there using the withdrawal method know exactly what I'm talking about
here. You studs know that this is probably as scary as this movie can get and
I wouldn't blame you if broke out into a cold sweat when you see this
happening. I'm not one to talk out of school, but I get serious religion about
once a month, as I sure many of you have. As you might imagine the news that everyone is expecting a visit from the stork
is received differently depending on the situation each woman is in. The
seventeen year old isn't pleased and you might imagine that the woman whose
husband has been out of the country for the last year is experiencing domestic
turmoil (though since these people are stiff-upper-lip British types instead of
the Americans who lay in front of ESPN all weekend in their potato chip stained
under shirts, the turmoil consists of a lot of glowering and slamming of doors
as opposed to the traditional "you're a no good slut" beatdown we would expect). Alan's sister Anthea (played by Quatermass And The Pit's Barbara Shelley) and her professor husband Gordon are all jacked up about
the prospect of having an alien baby. Of course at this point they still think
the kid is going to look more like Gordon, than one of those slimy hand puppets
with fangs, claws, and the disposition of the Juice stuck in traffic.  I think they were really excited because this is one of those marriages where
the woman has married her dad. This is another phenomena the movie never truly
explains. You've got this hot little chick who seems fairly intelligent and
then you've got this old fart played by George Sanders. George is one of those
guys that did things his own way in real life. Somehow he got himself hitched
to a couple of Gabor sisters (Madga and Zsa Zsa) at various times in his life,
starred in a ton of movies, eventually winning an academy award for his work in All About Eve, and finally committed suicide leaving a surly note behind for us to ponder:
"Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough.
I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck." Not
exactly Patrick Henry, but charming in its own whiny way.
Once Althea figures out that everybody in town is preggers (they never mention
that word in this movie!) she kind of gets all un-jacked about her unborn
child. She lays around a lot, frowning and pouting that Professor Gordon
probably isn't the father and scared that she's got some alien spawn running
around in her innards. Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to phase
Gordon, who remains excited about the prospect of raising Damien or whomever is
in the womb. I didn't find that particularly realistic. When your woman pretty much tells
you that it isn't her kid she's carrying, and your pretty sure she isn't out
whoring around on you, and that everyone else in town got pregnant at the very
same time, I would think a normal man would experience a whole range of
emotions other than giddy expectation. I'd think you'd be wanting to find out
what was going here. I would also hope that you would be concerned for your
wife's safety. I mean, we've all seen those It's Alive movies. We know how these "difficult pregnancies" turn out. The kids all get born and they're pretty much like us, except for some minor
details. They're all peroxide blonde hair, they've got different fingernails
from us, they grow really fast, and if one of these kids learn something, they
all know it. They also have this annoying tendency to control people's minds
when they get mad. Althea is forced to boil her hand in scalding water after
she gives the baby milk that was too warm (Well what do you expect? That kid
should be using his super powers to summon the Department of Social Services to
the house!), a guy drives himself into a wall when he accidentally runs over a
kid, and another guy blows his head off after trying to shoot some of the kids.
You know, you can kind of see why these kids have this persecution complex.
What kind of town are they running there in Midwich? It sure doesn't seem very
kid friendly. The movie had a nice build up, with a premise that wasn't the normal type you'd
find in these alien invasion movies of the fifties and the sixties. The kids
are genuinely creepy and it was a neat idea to use what are normally thought of
as cute little boogers as cold, calculating invaders. You really get a good
sense unease whenever these kids gather in their little group and just stare at
you, with their glowing eyes. Nothing as to their origin is really explained, but that isn't as irritating as
the bogus finish. I don't want to ruin it for any of you, but what sort of
professor pulls a time bomb made out of dynamite sticks from his desk drawer?
I also didn't really understand the motivation of Gordon. Why was he willing
to teach these kids when it was obvious that they had evil intentions? He knew
the kid his wife had wasn't his, yet he still babbled about how he wanted the
kid to exceed Einstein. Well, sure he'll exceed Einstein, because he isn't
human!
I also didn't understand why he suddenly switched from wanting to teach them
(what were they going to learn from an over-the-hill professor? And what was
his job anyway? Did Midwich have a university I never heard of?) to deciding
to do away with them.
An interesting attempt to do something a bit different, with some atmospheric
moments whenever the kids get cranky, but a cheap ending and weak main
character ultimately do it in. Still, it's nothing to kill yourself over. Or
marry a Gabor, for that matter.
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