By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
John Carpenter is a Master of Horror. That’s a statement of fact. He created Michael Myers, and even did the music for Halloween, but as good as he is, his 1995 Village of the Damned remake falls short of the original 1960 masterpiece of British horror. It’s 66 years old and still terrifying to this day, though Village of the Damned will only ever be the second best horror movie of 1960, thanks to Psycho.
Village Of The Damned Knows Children Are Creepy
Village of the Damned stars George Sanders, whom you might know as Mr. Freeze from Batman ‘66 or his voice as Shere Khan from The Jungle Book, as the doomed Professor Zellaby. In the tiny English town of Midwich, everyone falls unconscious one day, and then, a few months later, all of the women of the town give birth at the same time to identical looking children: platinum blonde with strange, hypnotic eyes.
Since it is 1960, a lot of questions were raised when the women whose husbands were away, or even worse, unmarried, became pregnant but to the film’s credit, the townsfolk quickly leap to the conclusion that something ain’t right with these kids. They grow fast, looking and acting like pre-teens at three years old, and travel as a group. It’s very creepy even before the murders. Or excuse me, “accidents.”
The children use their ability to control humans to cause one man to drive directly into a brick wall, and another man to shoot himself. It’s not quite as graphic as the remake’s inclusion of Dr. Verner (Kristie Alley) carving herself up with a scalpel. Village of the Damned’s oppressive atmosphere, enhanced by the black and white coloring, makes the children appear even more otherworldly and their cruel actions even more shocking and dramatic.
A Horror Blockbuster Before The Term Even Existed
Village of the Damned was a massive hit at the time. It earned over $2 million worldwide, which is more than Eli Roth’s latest horror film, The Ice Cream Man earned. And that’s without adjusting for inflation. Critics at the time praised the performance of the children. Unlike the 1995 remake with Christopher Reeve none of the alien-hybrid children have any redeemable qualities.
John Carpenter’s remake was one of the first times the internet turned on a movie with the now familiar refrain of, “the original was better.” Both films are not direct adaptations of the 1957 novel, The Mydwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, the same man who also wrote the chilling The Day of the Triffids, which would go on to influence 28 Days Later.
It’s possible to stream both the original film and the 1995 remake, though both are only available thru video on demand via Google Play, Amazon, YouTube, or Apple. Village of the Damned is a creepy, unnerving, brisk horror at only seventy-seven minutes that was one of the foundations of the entire genre as we know it today. Despite its age, the film is a moody masterpiece more terrifying than any of the yearly flood of PG-13 horror we’re forced to endure.
