Village of the Damned

AKA Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader Whose Mind is Connected to a Network of Other Creepy Genius British Schoolchildren?

A quietly effective, efficient and rather enjoyable adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos. Those kids will give you the heebie-jeebies, especially Stephens with his adult female-dubbed voice. The premise is set up nicely, and fortunately it doesn't try to explain too much. The end perhaps feels a bit rushed compared to the patience exercised earlier, but it makes sense given how the threat to humanity has been cranked up. A bit of a classic, imho.

SPOILERS ; Town falls asleep for hours and no one can communicate with them Than all the women end up pregnant with evil alien kids .......Wait What The F*** ?

The start is particularly good and the escalation as the plot progresses is slick. These kids certainly are creepy with their blank expressions and uniformity, the simple eye effect brilliantly cementing their otherworldly quality. Sanders provides this with much needed sincerity and gravity, but the ending disappoints and feels distinctly short on revelation.

The resolution feels like the writer wrote himself into a corner & fails to live up to the well-executed creepiness that precedes it. Still, it's rare for a film from this era to instill anything resembling horror in a modern audience & although it's not exactly scary it does eerieness really well. It turns pregnancy into something profoundly disturbing & makes blonde children sinister by making them implacable uniforms who never reveal exactly what it is they have in mind for the rest of us

Grabbed me from the opening scene. It gets its point across concisely and effectively, never overstaying its welcome. The script is intelligent, with the characters asking the same logical questions as the audience. The kids, with their glowing eyes and bizarrely mature affect, are creepy as hell. And it's a surprisingly dark movie, given its age. The shotgun scene was pretty disturbing. This is one of the better early 60s horror movies.

The film starts off quite intriguingly, but takes a little while to get to what it's actually about. It has a pretty cool science-fiction story, even though it has some pacing issues. It's a very slow burn, and then the climax kind of comes out of nowhere. Still, I enjoyed it and I'd recommend it to genre fans. The children are definitely creepy.

A little bit dated perhaps, but the special effects were good and pretty creepy. Story is creepy, but I wish the ending had a little bit more closure. Dem gurddamn kids do be evil.

A good idea that wasn't executed properly in the 60's or the 90's. Perhaps another remake is in order? Bring it!

Village of the Damned is some solid stuff. Feels of its time in a way that makes it feel like a long Twilight Zone episode, and I'm a huge fan. This isn't to say it's aged poorly. The story is paced at a quick clip that modern audiences will respond to, but this is also a detriment. There's a lot of dialogue summarizing characterization of the children that isn't actually shown, often cutting out areas for tension to build. The glowing eyes are still effective, though underused I'd say.

Great premise and I really wanted to like it, but then.. wtf.. ridiculous. These children look like "wtf i just born, let's flush it now", not "what a splendid mind, let's take a look. murders? oh, give me one more year, just one".

A lot goes unexplained, and probably for the better; what's hinted at is pretty ridiculous. Its characters try hard to be objective about things, lending a science-fictional quality to what's otherwise pretty straight horror. Excellent photography, direction, music; in particular the beginning and the end of the film take it from good to great. The dubbing of the lead child sounds silly but apparently that was actually his voice.

Dated storytelling but still creepy and effective.

Satan had thousands of years to come up with a plan and this was the best he could do?

A bit simplistic in terms of plot development, but it's certainly very effective at being creepy. The effects are a good example of less is more.

The good acting and creepy kids was undermined by a a slightly weak story.If the story was a little more fleshed out with more scenes with the kids I would have rated it higher.

I wasn't expecting much, but I thought this was pretty effective and rather creepy. Mind-reading children with scary eyes! I think it got the mood right - I was never laughing at it, at any rate, even if in retrospect some of it is a bit silly.

A decent scifi/horror flick that leaves a lot to the imagination. The acting was well done. And when children do a good job in horror movies, they can be very creepy.

AKA oh no our children have become young conservatives! There's a lot of meat in VotD, essentially a more British horror version of Childhood's End, that's as it should be. Post-war generation gap, that's a rich mine. Which makes it a pity that it plays the whole thing so quickly; there's very little conflict among the parents, very little ambiguity; everyone just knows right away that the children are Strange and are happy to write them off. Which may be exactly the point, I guess.

The concept is excellent, but portrayed perhaps a bit silly by today standards. Would love a remake with tons of gore and violence.

The plot kinda moves at a breakneck pace. I thought there were a lot of plot elements the movie could have lingered on, like these kids' dynamics with their families, or the studying of their behavior, or the creepy children who were born in other countries, but the whole thing is very straight-to-the-point. The abruptness of the ending especially stunned me.

A very decent horror with a good creepy atmosphere, thanks those eerie kids. But it has some serious pacing issues. Despite its short running time, it takes it time well to set up the situation. In contrast the final act is rushed, while this makes for some efficient storytelling, it does feel more could have been done to build extra tension with those sinister kids.

Em honra do centenário de Wolf Rilla. Filho de Walter Rilla, dirigiu algumas dezenas de filmes e episódios de séries de TV, mas é notoriamente mais lembrado por esse A Aldeia dos Amaldiçoados. Martin Stephens foi figurinha fácil em clássicos ingleses do horror dos anos 60: The Innocents e The Witches também contaram com sua presença e é fácil ver o porquê, ele consegue ser mesmo horripilante. Box Versátil Obras-primas do Terror Volume 1.

There was a simpsons episode based on this that was also not good.

The pacing is hellish.

The build-up much succeeds the finish.

A lot of great ideas in this horror movie, which unfortunately could have been a lot better had it expanded further on some of them instead of finishing it all in a too brisk 78 minutes. After some fantastic buildup in the first half, the finale feels a bit like you got cheated.

i do have a soft spot for 60s horror, but this one builds its tension well. taut storyline with a good conclusion. not much more you can ask for!

84.500

those DAMN kids.

These kids are as mean as fashionistas. Flick`s okay because it doesn't try to overdo it with the scary. Too bad the plot doesn't really thicken and the music is really bad.

Village of the Damned is "a'ight"; the kids are a little creepy, but the film itself is rather sluggish and uninteresting.

Not to be confused with "The Children of the Damned" or Disney's "That Damned Village".

84.000

Thoroughly creepy.

Nice one

The beguining sequence was impressive, but after a while I started to feel like I was watching and episode of Little Britain. "BRICK WALL BRICK WALL!"

This is a decent work of atom-age horror that warrants a viewing.

Between this and The Innocents, Martin Stephens really was just about the creepiest thing to come out of the early 60s. Highly effective adaptation of Wyndham's great novel, with Sanders in fine form.

Creepy children..

Good idea for a B-movie, even though it really isn't, it's still damn good.

"A strong and subtle horror film from England."

Depite being nearly 50 years old, still as creepy as

The last of the great (or, at least, very good) 50's paranoia sci-fi/horror flicks.

Passes the time.

The beginning is very strong (the opening sequence is quite eerie) but the ending isn't quite so effective. Good movie, though.