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.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

Title - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Language - English
Genre - Horror, Zombie, magic

A man in top hat and another that looks like a ghoul dig up a grave, they attack the caretaker when he finds then.  The duo then removes a corps from the coffin and the man in the top hat gets in.  Later Alan leads a group of his friends off a boat and through a graveyard towards the empty caretaker’s house.  Alan is the leader of an acting troupe and his friends are all actors in the same group.  As they walk they talk about the history of the graveyard with Alan telling grizzly tales about the former caretakers and the occupants of the graves.  When they reach the caretakers they break in, planning to spend the weekend.  After some time Alan opens a large chest that he had brought with it, he claims it is a magician's box.  He puts on a cape and takes a book he claims is a grimoire out and claims that they are going to raise the dead.  Treating it all as a joke the party go back out to the graveyard and dig up the grave of Orville Dunnworth, they hand Orvel over the cross behind his grave and, whilst Alan lays out some candle other party members dig up other graves.  Alan the reads incantations out of the book and, when nothing happens he curses the devil.  Other members of the group get in on the act by seeing who can give the best performance and curse.  Most of the party return to the house, bring the corps of Orville with them whilst two others remain in the graveyard to cover up the rest of the graves.   Alan's behaviour with the corps gets more and more bizarre leading to the rest of the actors walking out on him but, as they leave the house they are greeted by the return one of the their colleagues who was filling in the graves and hot on his trail are the residents for the graveyard who have been summoned forth as zombies.  The party retreat back into the house and try to  find a way past the attacking horde and back to  the boat.

The Acting in 'Children shouldn't play with dead things' is deliberately camp and over the top as the main cast are an acting troupe looking to get their next part.  Alan refers to them as his 'children' (making them the titular children) and he is often putting them down.  There is obvious tension in the group which seems to get a lot of outlet in the 'devil cursing' scene and after that Alan seems to have won back some of the group who were slowly turning against him but, as his behaviour with the corps gets worst those that are against him gain more support in the group to the point where his threats of kicking them out of the play is a risk they are willing to take.

Once the zombies appear in the film it takes on a classic ‘night of the living dead’ or ‘Evil dead’ feel with the group of protagonists trapped in a cabin with an increasing number of the dead surrounding them, in fact, as with Evil Dead they also have one of them inside the cabin.  The zombies themselves are quite good and do look like the undead corpse type and they seem slightly more intelligent than the zombies in other classic movies, although they do swarm in the same manner they are able to climb to higher windows and set up an ambush.  The final scene of the film leads us to believe that they either have more intelligence than previously shown or it is increasing.

The Films Score is good at setting the mood but i did find that, when the zombies were first rising the incidental music was distracting.

Over all I found ‘Children shouldn't Play with dead things’ a good low budget zombie flick.