Sunday, March 8, 2009

Children of the Damned (1963)


Sequel to "Village of the Damned".  

It has become known that children with "special abilities" are scattered throughout the world.  A group of psychologists decide to bring them all together to study them.  When their power is learned and their lives are threatened, the children seek refuge in an abandoned church.  The rest of the film is figuring out what these "monsters" are and how to deal with them.

This film does not live up to the original.  It focuses more on the science fiction aspect of the story and not enough on pure suspense and horror.  The picture is way too talky.  

The children in this film are not nearly as frightening as the first film as well.  The children in the first film had much more character.  These children rarely speak and they do not look creepy.  They do have the eerie glowing eyes effect, but it is only used a few times in the film.  

The film is really a message about the atom bomb scare at the time.  I get that it is important to have these parallels to real life and to get a message out, but at the same time the film should be entertaining and subtile about its messages.  This film does not quite live up to that.  

C  

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