Children Of The Damned (1964) | Stills : Gallery
Children of the Damned is a 1963 science fiction film, a thematic sequel to the 1960 version of Village of the Damned. It is about a group of children, with similar psi-powers to the original seeding, but enabling an opposite interpretation of the children being a more good and more pure form of human instead of totally evil and totally alien.
Cast
- Ian Hendry as Col. Tom Lewellin
- Alan Badel as Dr. David Neville
- Barbara Ferris as Susan Eliot
- Alfred Burke as Colin Webster
- Sheila Allen as Diana Looran
- Ralph Michael as Defense Minister
- Patrick Wymark as Commander
- Martin Miller as Professor Gruber
- Harold Goldblatt as Harib
- Patrick White as Mr. Davidson
- André Mikhelson as Russian official
- Bessie Love as Mrs. Robbins, Mark’s Grandmother
- Clive Powell as Paul
- Yoke-Moon Lee as Mi Ling
- Roberta Rex as Nina
Plot
Six children are identified by a team of UNESCO researchers investigating child development. The children have extraordinary powers of intellect and are all able to complete a difficult brick puzzle in exactly the same amount of time.
British psychologist Tom Lewellin (Hendry) and geneticist David Neville (Badel) are interested in Paul, a London boy whose mother Diana (Allen) clearly hates the child and insists she was never touched by a man. This is initially dismissed as hysteria and it is implied she has ‘loose’ morals. But after a while the two men realize that all six children were born without a father and are also capable of telepathy.
The children, from various countries — China, India, Nigeria, the Soviet Union, the USA and the UK, are brought to London for a collective study into their advanced intelligence. However the children escape from their embassies and gather at an abandoned church in Southwark, London. They intermittently take mental control of Paul’s aunt (Ferris) to help them survive in the derelict church. Meanwhile, the military debates whether or not to destroy them. The children have demonstrated the capacity for telekinesis and construct a machine which uses sonic waves as a defensive weapon, which kills several government officials and soldiers. But the military realizes that they only fight back when attacked. After psychologist Tom Lewellin makes a passionate plea asking the group return to their respective embassies, the children obey and murder embassy and military officials before returning to the church.
Lewellin urges the government to give the children leeway. However his team of scientists observe the difference between an ordinary human blood cell and the cells of one of the children, thereby implying the children to be non-human, and destined to become a threat to the human race.
When authorities try to take control of the children, they are forced to protect themselves. As the situation escalates into a final showdown between the military and the children, one of the scientists postulates that the judgment of the children being alien was incorrect, and that the children’s cells are in fact human, advanced by a million years. Meanwhile, the children also imply that they have arrived at the decision that their presence is incompatible, and therefore intend to lower their defenses and sacrifice themselves. The military commander recognizes that a mistake has been made, and aborts the attack command. However, the command is triggered accidentally: by a screwdriver no less! The church is destroyed and the children of the damned are killed.