CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED: Blu-ray (MGM, 1964) Warner Archive

Lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place, particularly at the movies – the calculus of success, once achieved, and entertainment value to be experienced for the first time, never again to be duplicated to the same measure, or rather, as infrequently as the discovery of four-leaf clovers and unicorns in one’s backyard. Ironically, the monumental favoring of failure has never dissuaded film makers. And so it is with director, Anton M. Leader’s return to horror’s hallowed ground with Children of the Damned (1964), a turgid and terrible sequel to Wolf Rilla’s infinitely superior and truly unsettling, Village of the Damned (1960). In nearly every way, John Briley’s screenplay manages to submarine the intent of the original’s tantalizing terror, talking whole scenes to death and establishing a lethal lethargy to the picture’s pace to make it seem far more involved and drawn-out than its actual 90-minutes. Worst of all, the ‘continuation’ here is mostly in the mind of the viewer, having fonder reflections of the earlier masterpiece and expectations this sequel will, indeed, arrive at its own conclusions about wicked little moppets with glowing eyes, performing mind-control to take over the world. Alas, the gloom here does not translate to unspeakable terror, nor even the hint of Cold War anxiety that life as we know it is going to hell and a handbasket, dictated by unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control. No, for that we have to advance to 2019 and the Corona-virus. But I digress.

Leader and Briley, presumably, aspire to grander designs here, a parable for lost democracy at the hands of a totalitarian state and the dying art of practicing Christians, with subliminal abortion rights issues at stake as the kids are killed by the military in the end. Given all the timely subtext, one would at least anticipate Children of the Damned as a capsule/snapshot of another wrinkle in human evolution, ingeniously reconstituted as a sci-fi classic on the cusp for rediscovery. It’s not. In fact, Children of the Damned is a hugely inferior reboot. In lieu of the ‘creep’ factor we get a cruel little morality play, the ‘message’ getting in the way of the shudders and, at times, indigestibly ridiculous. As before, the 6 children we meet here with telepathic powers and highly evolved intelligence are a threat to mankind. Alas, the transparent, and bone-chilling subtext of genetically modified Arian super-humans that once served as a haunting reminder of Hitler’s desire to literally ‘build’ a new race of beings after he had, of course, obliterated all the others gone before him, herein evaporates as this new breed of eye-glowing evil-doers hail from all points of the globe, born to mothers claiming never to have had sex. No – not the immaculate conception times six. Something more sinister – a more restrained ‘Omen-esque’ excursion, but with mere shades of the anti-Christ popping up now and then. No head-spinning or green bile either.  Recognized as a danger to the world, the children seek sanctuary in a church, stirring all sorts of religious and existential complications for the movie’s adult protagonists. Why are they here? Why are we here? Why is it acceptable for armies to kill thousands, but not for individuals to murder each other in their daily lives? Hmmm.

Children of the Damned begins in earnest with the discovery of 6 children categorized by a team of UNESCO academics as having astonishing intelligence. Each completes a complex ‘brick puzzle’ in exactly the same amount of time. Brit-psychologist Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) and geneticist, David Neville (Alan Badel) are fascinated by Paul (Clive Powell), a London boy whose mum, Diana (Sheila Allen) despises him, insisting she was never actually ‘touched’ by a man. Diana’s claims are initially dismissed. Clearly, she has been living in sin and with the shameful results of her indiscretion.  It all makes perfect sense, until Lewellin and Neville learn of the other 5 moppets from China, India, Nigeria, The Soviet Union and the U.S., seemingly born without fathers, but also capable of telepathy. Electing to bring the children together for a ‘study’ in advanced intelligence, Lewellin and Neville have decidedly bitten off more than they can chew. The kids elude the scientists and embassy officials, taking refuge in an abandoned church in Southwark, London. Intermittently, they laud their mind-control over Paul's aunt, Susan Elliot (Barbara Ferris) to aid in their survival. Meanwhile, the Defense Minister (Ralph Michael) and military commander (Patrick Wymark) contemplate whether or not to destroy them, as the children have since constructed a complex sonic waves defensive weapon to have killed several government officials and soldiers.

Nevertheless, the children only use this weapon when provoked. Lewellin’s plea for the peaceful return of each child to their respective embassy fails when several embassy and military personnel wind up dead and the children reorganize at the church.  Lewellin now urges for more latitude to discover a way to harness the children’s potential for the good of mankind. However, when a blood sample reveals certain unexplained anomalies, the military deduce the kids are alien hybrids destined to wipe out the human race. They, therefore, must be destroyed. Several feeble attempts are made to take control of the children. But the children, instead, protect themselves against harm by dispatching with their ‘enemies’. Eventually, one of the scientists, Prof. Gruber (Martin Miller) postulates the blood sample taken from Paul proves not the inklings of an alien/human hybrid, but rather a superior human blood line, advanced several million years into the future. Meanwhile, the children, having deduced their ‘outcast’ status as irreconcilable with the present age of humanity, have decided to sacrifice themselves for the basic good of all. Realizing the error in his earlier judgement, the military commander plans to withdraw. Instead, the fatal blow is achieved by an ill-placed screwdriver. The church is destroyed and the children killed.

Children of the Damned is colossally unsatisfying. The standoff between the kids and the military has no spark of immediacy to heighten our sense of fear. And the murders committed along the way by the children here, unlike those dealt with in the earlier movie, are explained away as an altruistic defense mechanism in self-preservation. Gruber’s deduction, that the children hail from advanced human blood-lines is also sincerely flawed as it fails to explain each mother’s claim they were never impregnated the old-fashioned way, or even by viable artificial insemination. So, exactly how did this highly evolved race of human beings come into existence?!? Okay, so it’s only a movie, and need only make sense in the world in which the circumstances are being played out. But here too, Children of the Damned is just misguidedly off-kilter and off-beat. We do get some fairly high-caliber performances, especially from Ian Hendry and Alan Badel. But otherwise, the weight of the movie’s moralizing gets in the way of its entertainment value. There is just too much intellectualizing and contextualizing of the mystery surrounding these eye-glowing geeks, herein presented as sad-eyed survivors rather than sinister offspring derived from some alien experiment gone wrong on earth. The original movie had fear of the unknown as its wonderfully bizarre and unsettling virtue. Children of the Damned sets all of this aside for a deeper critique of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ such uber-intelligent life might have arrived among us. Our decision, therefore, to wipe it off the face of the earth, speaks more to the cruelty of mankind, to far outweigh any intergalactic threat to our own blood-thirsty desire to remain the ‘supreme’ being on this planet at any and all costs – even at a total sacrifice of our morality, understanding and compassion…how very un-Christian, indeed!

Children of the Damned arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) and predictably looks very fine indeed in 1080p. WAC’s due diligence here has yielded a marvelous transfer with excellent tonality in its B&W gray scale. Contrast is ‘bang on’ perfect and fine details, crisp and finely nuanced. No age-related artifacts either. There are a handful of scenes that continue to look marginally soft, possibly mastered from dupes rather than an original camera negative. The source here is unclear, but looks pretty impressive for the most part. The 2.0 DTS audio is solid too. No complaints. Ported over from the DVD release, John Briley’s comprehensive commentary, also a theatrical trailer. Nothing else to see here, folks. Children of the Damned is a weak-kneed sequel to Wolf Rilla’s bone-chiller from 1960. WAC’s hi-def release is worthy of the medium but not so much a great scare-fest that most, with anticipations built-in from the earlier picture, will find satisfying. WAC has far better movies in its vast holdings yet to be minded in hi-def. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

1