Village of the Damned

A film set in a village in the English countryside. One afternoon everyone in the village falls unconscious. People, animals, birds; they drop where they stand. Anyone who enters falls too. The army draws a line and whoever crosses it loses consciousness. A few hours later everyone wakes. Nobody remembers anything. Then something is noticed. Every woman in the village capable of bearing a child is pregnant, including the unmarried. The children are born on the same day. All have white hair and pale eyes and all grow faster than normal. Their intelligence is extremely high. What is taught to one is known by all and they understand each other without speaking. Gordon is a scientist in the village. He is counted as the father of one of them and begins teaching them. From there the film becomes a story of threat. The children harm people and their method is always the same: they make the person kill themselves. Their eyes change at that moment. They glow and the person opposite loses control. The state gets involved. The same thing has happened in other countries and some have already applied a solution. What the narrative is interested in is not monsters but a decision: the last section is given over entirely to what one adult will do, and the solution is not a plan but a work of the mind. The final scene is built around a brick wall. Gordon tries to hold a wall in his mind and the children try to read him. The child actors are the film's strength. The narrative gives them almost no lines and takes its effect from their stillness. The glowing eyes were added afterwards. The effect was put in optically for the American release and was not in the British version. The source is John Wyndham's novel. George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens and Michael Gwynn are in the cast. Wolf Rilla directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet, low-budget British horror. Who it is not for: anyone expecting spectacle; the film runs seventy-five minutes and shows almost nothing.