Village of the Damned (1960)
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED
WRITERS: Screenplay by Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, and George Barclay
DIRECTOR: Wolf Rilla
STARRING: George Sanders as Gordon Zellaby
Barbara Shelley as Anthea Zellaby
Michael Gwynn as Alan Bernard
John Phillips as General Leighton
Thomas Heathcote as James Pawle
Martin Stephens as David Zellaby
QUICK CUT: A quiet village in the British countryside invites in a bunch of newborns after a miracle
THE MORGUE
Roger Zellaby - A doctor in the town of Midwich, an older man, in love with his younger wife. He wants to see the best in people.
Anthea Zellaby - Roger’s wife, loves him right back, a doting mother. Tough for her to escape 1960s female stereotypes.
Alan Bernard - Anthea’s brother, a soldier, and more pragmatic than Roger.
David Zellaby - One of the space baby Midwich Cuckoos. Smarter than you. The arguable leader of the group. Has flashes of compassion and connection, but is largely cold and distant.
Double damnit!
TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back Triskelions! To wrap up March, we are going back to Midwich, but this time it's time to look at the original theatrical adaptation that inspired Carpenter's remake.
The movie opens non Doctor Gordon Zellaby contacting his brother in law, Major Alan Bernard about their weekend plans. He then promptly proceeds to pass out, as does the entire village of Midwich.
We are wasting NO time getting to the village wide blackout, I see. I do appreciate the character centric approach of spending time with the villagers the remake takes, but cutting right to the chase is nice, too.
CAP: Things were just so laid back, back in the day.
Alan hurries to the village, and as he's approaching, he runs into one of the local bobbies, looking for the bus that runs into town, and hasn't shown up.
They see the bus a bit up the road, having ridden off into the ditch. The cop approaches, and as he nears, he passes out.
Alan turns around to ge the authorities in on this, and quickly have the location surrounded and marked off.
CAP: Are you my mummy?
One of the soldiers gets into a gas masks, with a rope tied around him, to test the boundary. Once he passes out, the rest reel him back in like a heavy, sleeping fish.
I didn't do much rewatching of the remake, so any parallels I catch are strictly from memory. The soldier testing the limits of the field is a solid and sensible scene to have recreated.
The town doctor arrives just as the soldier is passing out, and he is most definitely not Christopher Reeve. In fact, he's barely even a character in the movie.
CAP: Looks like we caught a big one!
Alan has a plane fly overhead, to recon the situation. He sees the whole town asleep, and nothing moving. Alan directs him to slowly lower his altitude, and to pull out the instant he feels anything weird.
Unfortunately, whatever is affecting the town does extend upwards to some extent, and it is too powerful to just pull out of. The plane goes down, crashing behind the trees.
After the crash, cows start waking up, and people are soon to follow, just as mysteriously as when they fell asleep.
CAP: Wakes up the instant someone says "walk".
The whole town reawakens, the military pokes around searching for radiation, gas, devices, anything, and it all comes up nothing.
So time passes, and life gets back to normal, and Roger's wife Anthea picks up some pickles from the local grocer. Ah, pickles. We're going for deep cliche, huh?
When she gets home, she finds Roger deep in his work, and he is busily explaining some developments he's found in the plants, when he all of a sudden stops and realises something is up with her. She gives SUCH a delightful laugh. It's just a small moment, but there's a realness and honesty to it, that I just wanted to highlight.
Since I've already covered the remake, and this movie is 50+ years old with several adaptations everyone is familiar with, I won't beat around the bush; Anthea is not the only pregnant woman in town, and this causes no small amount of problems.
We have the virgin pregnancy, but that doesn't really go anywhere here, which was again, a sensible theme to expand upon in the remake. Also, there's the guy who came back from a year traveling, to discover his wife is somehow pregnant
CAP: Getcher babies! Getcher babies here!
It doesn't take them long to put things together, and bring all the women in for examinations, showing everyone who is capable of giving birth, is now pregnant.
Naturally, Anthea doesn't take this well, and likely others, freaking out that they don't know where these babies came from.
So of course we cut to a pub where a bunch of men are hanging around grousing. And if I had one complaint about this movie, and to be fair this is more a sign of the times than a genuine complaint, it sure does focus a lot of its story on how the MEN in this town feel about this situation, and not, y'know, the women carrying the alien babies.
CAP: And that's the real question; how does this affect ME!
The night of the births comes, and I love the town doctor delivering Anthea's child, exiting the bedroom and IMMEDIATELT asking for a cigarette. Signs of the times, indeed.
We get a scene catalogueing the differences they can detect in the children with 1960s era science, and before you know it, Anthea is screaming as she creates the original arm in the boiling water scene. It's a nice sudden shock to the plot, but I do miss the slow inevitable build up to it in the remake.
A year after their birth, Zellaby pulls out a Chinese puzzle box, has Alan try and open it, and then hands it to his son, David. The child easily opens the box, and retrieves the chocolate inside. Roger then takes the box around to multiple children, and they all open it up, so they theorize they have a hivemine.
CAP The box. You opened it, we came.
I hate that they're right, because this doesn't really demonstrate that, just that the children are all smart beyond their years.
One of the children has the box taken by one of his "brothers" and this is the first time we truly see them use their brain powers to mind control the kid, and make him give the box back.
The plot jumps ahead several years, until the kids are functionally about eight or ten years old. They are ostracized and feared by the town at large, and keep mostly to themselves.
CAP: We are the Five in One, we are never alone.
Alan and Roger debate the children's morality. Alan clearly sees them as bad, as does much of the town, to one degree or the other. Roger is certain they just need to be taught.
We spend a brief moment with David and his mother after he cuts his finger, showing him cold and distant, but oop, we have to cut to a gathering of men talking about the town instead.
They tell us there were other incidents that occurred around the globe, on the same day as Midwich, most of them dead. The military discusses what to do about Midwich, seeing them as a threat, as Zellaby tries to brush it all aside as kids being kids!
CAP: There was one incident in Midwich, California, and another in Midwich, Australia. Strange, they all happened in towns with the same unlikely name...
Zellaby does manage to convince them to give him a year, to try and teach the children some morals. If they can be convinced to be good, they could be the answer to all the world's problems.
So, all the Cuckoos are gathered at school, with Zellaby teaching them, and he asks them some questions. Wondering how deep into his mind they can read, do they know about aliens, stuff like that.
Later, someone nearly runs over one of the Cuckoos, and they mentally command him to drive into a wall.
Anthea sees the incident, but the children wipe her mind of the events, showing their growing power. She only remembers seeing the man get out of the car, then drive into the wall.
CAP: We want a puppy.
Thanks to her testimony, the court rules the death an accident, but the man's brother doesn't believe it. He shows up later ready to shoot the kids.
The Zellabys and Alan see Jim, and tell him to go home before it's too late. Unfortunately, it is too late, the Cuckoos see him, and make him shoot himself with the rifle. As well as making the other adults watch, making it clear the threat of their power. Even Roger finds it hard to deny the childrens' malicious intent.
Meanwhile, things are not going well in one of the few colonies that survived besides Midwich. The Russians swiftly wiped an entire town off the map when it was clear they became too powerful. The British military is contemplating the same, seeing Roger is not getting through to them.
CAP: Ah, the local mob has finally decided to intervene
The townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands, and that goes swimmingly well, until David makes their ringleader set hmself on fire.
Alan confronts the children, and they know they're the only ones left. They are determined to survive, much like the alien virus from Evilution. They melt Alan's brain, sending him into a state of shock. It seems like he'll survive, but the warning is clear, even to Zellaby.
Roger reveals he has talked with the military, and they know soldiers aren't the answer, a the children would only make them shoot each other. Which must have been a line Carpenter glommed onto, because he had that exact thing play out in the remake.
David shows up and tells Zellaby that they must leave, and he shall make arrangements for the children to do just that, and find families to take them in. They are almost at the point where they can spread out and "make new colonies".
CAP: I can never set these right, always blinking 12...
Much like in the remake, Zellaby puts together a bomb, takes it to the school when he goes to meet with the children, and uses the mental image of a brick wall to hold them off until it's too late.
Unlike the remake, there is no escape, Roger and all the children go boom, and the town reacts to the explosion as the credits roll.
