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''Village of the Damned'' was a Science Fiction Film made in 1960 . It was a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel '' The Midwich Cuckoos '' by John Wyndham . The actor George Sanders was in the leading role, Professor Gordon Zellaby. There was a Remake in 1995. SYNOPSIS Near the beginning of the movie, an entire English village falls asleep, and anyone who walks into the village also falls asleep, but if pulled out (such as by ropes), the person awakens, reporting a cold feeling just before falling asleep. About that time, the military on the scene, everyone starts waking up. The incident is referred to as a "time-out", and no discernable cause is determined. About two months later, all women and girls of child-bearing age abruptly are discovered to be pregnant, married or unmarried. Until it becomes known that ''all'' such women are pregnant, there are accusations by husbands of unfaithfulness if the man was away (e.g., at sea) or, in the case of the unmarried, pre-marital relations, and none of the teen girls can account for what has happened. All the women give birth over a span of about a day, and the doctor doing most or all of the deliveries reports on the unusual nature of the children. They all have unusual hair colour, and their scalp hair is unusual. By this time, British Intelligence has determined that their English village is not the only place affected, and follow-up investigation over the next short number of years reveals the results elsewhere. In a Canadian Arctic village, the children, all being fair-haired, were killed. In another village, all the children died. In a Soviet Union village, the children were born normally. At about a year or so of age, Gordon tries out a Chinese puzzle on one child: a series of sliding, pulling and moving parts of the puzzle is required to reach the candy hidden inside. Gordon takes it to a second child, who makes all the right moves to get to the candy; the third child the same. All the children share a group intelligence. The children are unusual in their behaviour as they continue to grow. They dress impeccably, speak in a very adult way, are very well-behaved... but they also demonstrate an intolerance of those who are intolerant of them, and begin to exhibit the power to read minds when expedient, or to force people to do things against their will, the latter accompanied by an alien glow in their eyes. A motorist nearly runs over a child, gets out and earnestly apologizes, something any ordinary person would understand. The children respond by forcing the motorist to get back into his vehicle and driving it into a stone wall, killing him. Gordon, comparing the children's resistance to reasoning to a brick wall, decides to undertake to try to teach the children while hoping to learn from them, and the children are all placed in a separate building where they will learn and live. About this time, with the children continuing to exert their will, Gordon learns that the Soviets have atom-bombed the village with their own mutant children: the village no longer exists. Gordon takes a time-bomb with him for what he expects to be the final time he meets with the children, and tries to keep the children from learning about the bomb by imagining a brick wall. His son David discovers he's thinking of a brick wall, and all the children exert force to try to break down Gordon's imagined wall, but only at the last second discover the bomb Gordon knows about, and the bomb explodes, killing the children. There was a sequel about a decade later, "Children of the Damned", about a group of children, possibly a later "seeding", who are holed up in a building in a large city. EXTERNAL LINK The film was shot on location in the village of Letchmore Heath - near Watford - approximately 12 miles (20 kilometres) north of London. Local buildings, such as The Three Horseshoes Pub, and Aldenham School, were used during filming. |
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