Village Of The Damned (1960)
 This
low-budget, well-made and chilling film - based on John Wyndham's
novel The Midwich Cuckoos - proves beyond a doubt that good
movies need not be costly.
There isn't a wasted motion in this story about an English
village terrorised by strange children who use unearthly powers to
control the adults around them.
The English village of Midwich is subject to an alien intrusion
and for some hours is cut off from the rest of the country.
A hemispherical field around the village causes all within it
to fall into a deep sleep.
Several months later all the female population of the village
of childbearing age become pregnant. The children they give birth
to are golden-haired, communicate telepathically, and can enforce
their will on the village adults.
As the children grow, their powers increase. Gordon Zellaby
(George Sanders) proves that what one of them learns, they all
learn, by teaching his son to open a puzzle box.
The children move together in groups, outcast from the other
village children, and their strange, precise, cold way of talking
and their staring eyes causes nervousness in the village adults.
It turns out these are not the only group of odd children - the
phenomenon is occurring worldwide.
The stakes are increased when it is discovered that the
Russians have blown up a village in which similar children were
born, and the men of Midwich, angered by mysterious deaths in the
village (caused by the children), march upon the school in which
the children are now living.
David, who has become the main spokesman for the children,
orders his father to get them away. Zellaby, by then the only
adult the children trust at all and whose lessons the children
enjoy, agrees, but he comes to the next lesson with dynamite in
his briefcase.
The mental shield he puts up - a simple image of a brick wall -
is only sufficient to withstand the combined assault of the
children for a few minutes, but it is enough.
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