In the small village of Midwich, every person collapses, unconscious, for four hours. Later, it’s found that every fertile woman in town became pregnant in those lost hours. All give birth simultaneously to blond-haired babies with strange eyes. As the children develop mental powers, Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders), a scientist whose wife, Anthea (Barbara Shelley), bore one of them, argues that they must be taught to develop human morals while the military maintains they should be destroyed, while it is still possible.
Invasion films of the ’50s (and early ’60s) are not known for their impressive casts. Most of the time you had wooden, incompetent C-actors. In a few cases, the performers were competent. Village of the Damned is the only case of a real A-talent, and it shows that actors are every bit as important as scripts and directors. Luckily, the script and direction are good as well, but George Sanders elevates the project. Happily, none of the other actors fall into the C category.
The movie is at its best in the first half, where the mystery of what has happened to the women is frightening to everyone. It’s emotional as the virgin and the woman whose husband has been away for a year try to cope with their unexplained pregnancies. The virgin birth concept was too much for the Catholic Legion of Decency, which caused MGM to delay the film and then move production to England. It was handy that there were no fertile twelve or thirteen year-old girls in Midwich, but that would have been too much for British censors as well as American ones.
The picture plays back and forth between Zellaby as an overly analytical scientist trying to solve the mystery, and Zellaby as a concerned husband and man who is growing too old to have children. His wife’s pregnancy was a miracle, but he thought just a metaphorical one. He soon realizes that it’s an actual miracle, and the closest he’ll come to a child of his own is to teach this alien baby what he knows.
The second half of the movie gives us the creepy children who all look alike. They’ve become cultural icons, and while the film becomes a bit muddled, it’s still fun.
Village of the Damned is another take on an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type paranoia movie. But this one doesn’t bring up images of communist cells all around us. Yes, the attack is still from within, but from our children, presenting a metaphor for the generation gap, which was growing wider as the ’50s came to a close. There’s also a Nazi undercurrent, with the blond kids the first step in the creation of a master race. With several interpretations that avoid the whole McCarthy/Communist frenzy, Village of the Damned is an easier film to stomach than many of its contemporaries.
I do have questions about Zellaby’s scientific credentials. At first he appears to be a physicist, but he studies plants and works with the doctor on the women’s pregnancies. He’s also an agent of the military (they say he’s one of them at the beginning), has access to explosives, lives in a manor house, and is invited to high governmental meetings. Yet not one word is said about what kind of scientist he is.
Village of the Damned is a transitional film. The paranoid and simplistic cold war alien pictures were fading out. Horror was headed toward psychological thrillers and demonic movies while science fiction was dispersing, no longer clinging to a single unifying theme. Village of the Damned had “evil” children, a rarity before 1960, but much more common after. As no explanation is ever given for their creation (the scientists assume aliens are involved), they could as easily have been the Devil’s spawn, which leads to Rosemary’s Baby six years later.
It was followed by Children of the Damned, and poorly remade as Village of the Damned (1995).