Barbara Shelley

Village Of The Damned (1960) Review

By Jake Euker

Excellent

The creepiest moment in the recent horror film Godsend - maybe the only creepy moment - occurs when the boy around whom the action is centered informs his father, in a steady, vaguely threatening voice, that he doesn't think he likes him so much anymore. It's scary; the boy is in a sudden position of authority over his dad. The grown-ups in the audience don't like the way it sounds.It's a good thing, then, that these same grown-ups weren't around in the British village of Midwich circa 1950. In that sleepy hamlet the entire population suffers from a brief blackout one day; a few months later, all the Midwich women of child-bearing age find that they were expecting, and the children, when they come along, are not exactly like the other boys and girls. They are, in fact, exactly like one another: blonde, rather too intelligent for our comfort, and possessed of a particularly icy stare. To say that they are aloof is an understatement. And, perhaps most tellingly, they have a hive mentality: They keep only one another's company, they communicate wordlessly, and when one of these children learns a fact, the others automatically learn it too.

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