Better keep an eye on the kids

Title - Village of the damned (1960)
Language - English
Genre - Horror

Characters:

Alan Bernard - an army man friends of the Zellaby’s

Gordon Zellaby - a professor

Anthea zellaby - Gordon's Wife

David Zellaby - Gordon’s son & leader of the ‘others’

Village of the damned is a film based upon ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ by John Wyndham which has also been the inspiration for Stephen King’s ‘Under the Dome’.

The main theme of ‘Village of the Damned’ seems to be paranoia.  The film is set in the small English village of Midwich which seems to be out in the middle of the countryside.  The army are nearby practicing maneuvers and it is is hinted a few times in the film  (and more in the book) the the villagers are suspicious of what they are actually doing.  Every living thing passes out in Midwich village an event that some of the villager think was caused by the army testing some kind of new weapon but this is treated as more of an irritation.  The feeling of paranoia really starts when the women of Midwich begin finding out that they are pregnant, to begin with the connection with the pregnancies and the previous event are not noticed and so many of the men start thinking that their wives have been cheating on them and, as Midwich is only a small village there is suspicion around.  Once the link has been found and it is revealed that all the women are pregnant the source of the paranoia is shift to the unborn children and village almost becomes divided by gender, the women are doing their best to keep their families together but we see that the men are reacting with fear towards them.  This is one of the scenes that makes ‘Village of the Damned’ an interesting film because it does not portray the women as weak victims or as eye candy, it shows that they are all different characters who are just trying to cope with the situation they find themselves in.

The mood improves slightly when the children are born and the seem to be normal but the fears soon return when the children s true nature is revealed.  The villagers try to take control of the children  but soon find that even the army is powerless and that other countries have taken very drastic action to solve the problem.

The question that is raised is should the villagers even try to force the children to follow the same rules as them.  They are obviously a different creature to the villagers and most of what they do is to defend themselves, the children know that, for the most part  they are superior to the rest of the villages but they do seem to know that they are making some of the villagers uncomfortable.  In one scene we see that the children are aware that they are making the shop owners nervous and they say that they will arrange someone else.  Apart from the facts that the children over react to the perceived threats they do seem to be trying to keep themselves to themselves and this would mean that the real bad guys are the villagers who are reacting mainly from fear.

The Village of the Damned is a good film, relying more on atmosphere than on scares and jumps and raises a few good questions.