Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Village of the Damned

     This movie is particularly creepy, mostly because the evil villains in this film take the form of innocent-looking children. The movie begins when the small town of Midwich falls under some sort of mysterious blackout. People, as well as animals, all fall into a deep coma. Anyone that goes near Midwich instantly falls down unconscious. Scientists and the military surround the town. After a few hours, the coma lifts but the blackout is never explained. 

      Shortly afterward, all of the women in Midwich are soon discovering that they are now pregnant and that the date of conception goes back to the day of the mysterious blackout. From the beginning, the pregnancies are strange. For one thing, one of the women was a virgin when she got pregnant. Since this phenomenon hasn't gone unnoticed by the military, they set up a base in town to monitor these bizarre events. 

      The babies are all born on the same day (fully developed after only 5 months) and all have very similar characteristics, almost as if they're siblings from the same set of parents. They all have white hair (some really cheap-looking wigs), elongated fingers, and very strange eyes. They also grow very quickly and are extraordinarily smart. They also seem to be telepathic and can read people's minds, and if one child learns something, the others somehow immediately know it as well. By the age of three, they have the appearance of children about ten years old and have strong enough minds to be able to read anyone's thoughts and can force people to do their will. 

      The military eventually learns that other "blackout children" have been born in other locations around the world. Determined to discover the source behind this phenomenon, the military and scientists disregard the children's growing powers in order to continue studying them. 

      A cheap but effective camera trick is used when the children stare and use their eyes to control other people. The film negative was flipped over just the eyes of the children, making them appear to glow a bright white (or bright blue if you like the colorized version). When it's learned that the other cities with "blackouts" have been destroyed by the children who now want to disperse and likely "grow" others like themselves. They must be stopped!! It's obviously gonna take a suicide bomber for this job!! 

      Very creepy mindfreak of a movie that spawned a relatively weak sequel called "Children of the Damned" which had "blackout children" from every country you can name, come together for what seems like nefarious reasons but actually just want world peace.  Village of the Damned was remade in the early '90s and even though it got bad reviews, I personally thought it was very well done, by none other than famed horror director John Carpenter.  It stuck to the original story, had cool special effects, and was coincidentally Christopher Reeve's last film before his horse riding accident that eventually took his life.  A line spoken by the children that always stuck with me was them calmly stating "We know what you're thinking"

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