Village of the Damned (1960) by Wolf Rilla

Director: Wolf Rilla

Year: 1960

Country: United Kingdom/USA

Alternate Titles: The Midwich Cuckoos

Genre: Evil Kids

Plot:

After a series of strange births in a small English village, the progeny of the births grow into children with a highly advanced IQ and deadly telekinetic powers that are used to bend others to their will, eventually forcing the town to rid themselves of the children.

Review:

This was quite a fun and enjoyable effort here with some pretty positive points. Among the biggest elements here is in how this one really tends to utilize their powers, which here come from rather glaring examples of their inhumanness and otherworldly nature that doesn't strike anyone as being odd at all, but rather as a freak of nature to be studied. The very first instance of watching the two-year-old versions master a complicated Chinese mystery box as they do in mere seconds despite being shown the contraption for the first time at that very point should've been a massive clue something is going on, while the opening village-wide blackout here and subsequent deluge of births without conception being another sterling example of this here, and the incidents with the neighborhood pets and children simply furthers the case considerably as it's becoming obvious here that something's wrong with them.

Those display scenes are quite fun, as are the attempts by the military to get things reigned in, being quite fun as the military shootout amongst themselves while under the children's control makes for a fine action scene as well as a creepy display of their chilling powers. There's a lot of that throughout here, and it's quite fun to get it all in here with these scenes, as the displayed group powers do have a rather chilling air here in regards to how they manage to force this upon others while also managing to come off as creepy villains for doing this. Beyond this, there's also a rather fine opening here as this one manages to make fine use of the town's blackout and subsequent reactivation that occurs without any warning or reason, and the scenes of them attempting to gain entrance to the town result in a rather chilling proposition and some fine action scenes here of the town under those conditions, which is quite a shocking opening here.

These, though, are all more than enough to hold off the films' few small problems. The biggest issue here is the opening town blackout, which is such a monumental and completely thrilling event in the history of the nation that not to follow up on it and just dismiss the people as easily here makes no sense. Even more likely, the fact that this one manages to keep how they got pregnant as they did a total mystery is another big reason why this incident should've been handled a bit differently, as this one beats around the bush of that factor so much that this, as well, becomes something of a problem area. The last problem here is the films' handling of the children themselves, as while this one does a great job at making them creepy it's so obvious from the beginning that something is wrong here that no further action or inquisition against them following the events that happened beforehand is entirely puzzling, as this should've been the final nail in the coffin to examine the incidents at the beginning and becomes quite problematic because of that. Otherwise, this one was quite fun overall.

Overview: ****/5

Dark and chilling killer-kid effort that still holds up nicely, there's a lot to like here, which manages to get quite a lot of fun points to overcome the minor issues present in this one. Those with an interest in this style of fare or who are fans of this era of the genre will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.