Cheap Children of the Damned (Video) (Ian Hendry, Alan Badel) (Anton Leader) Price

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Customer Reviews of Children of the Damned

The Children: We Are Here For the Same Reason You Are
There is the unfortunate but understandable tendency to judge the merits of THE CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED against its highly successful predecessor, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. In the latter, director Wolf Rilla created crackling suspense with the birth of a brood of telepathic blond children who are clearly the result of extraterrestrial intervention. Their mission was to create more of their own kind; hence the mutually antagonistic Darwinian confrontation between them and humanity. With the former, however, director Anton Leader shifts the focus from the why of the children to the how. Several times, a human scientist asks the children, "Why are you here?" Each time, the reply is noncommital. For the most part the children are eeriely silent, and it is only toward the end that they can verbalize, however imperfectly, their mission. Just before the inevitable bloodbath, the children's spokesboy Paul notes: "We are here for the same reason you are." This reply raises more questions than it answers since humanity is here only because as a species human beings have run roughshod over all competitors.

This film is not meant to be a sequel to the earlier VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, despite the similar titles and storyline. CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED is a stand alone film that is typical of the British thrillers of the mid 1960's. The production is starkly filmed in harsh shades of black and white with an earnest cast that delivers considerable suspense, even if none of the actors is known to American viewers. Both films suggest that humanity is quite willing to meet all threats to its safety with a singlemindedess of purpose that is at least as fixed as any the children could produce.

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Not as good as Village of the Damned.
I like both versions of Village of the Damned. The children are eerie and a little scary, so cold-blooded and cruel. The children in this movie, six children from different countries staying in an abandoned church in London, don't look as eerie and seem to be confused rather than evil. The small town in the first movie is also a more interesting environment than the big city in this sequel.

The acting is quite fair but the screenplay is far from as good as the one of the first movie. The cinematography is quite good, but this sequel should have been better, but it's not a bad movie, watch this if it is on TV but don't pay too much to see it. If you have seen neither of them, watch Village of the Damned, it's quite much better. I give this movie 6 points of 10. I wouldn't buy this movie.

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a decent movie in it's own right, but not really a sequel
While many people seem to think this movie is a sequel to Village of the Damned, it really isn't. This fact should be clear to anyone who has seen both films. Children of the Damned is actually a completely different take on the same basic theme presented in Village of the Damned (kids with super brains and psychic powers wreaking havoc). There is no continuity between the two films. In Village of the Damned, women have alien children artificially implanted into their wombs. Children of the Damned creates the same problem by having children mysteriously born with a mutation that causes them to be a million years ahead of ordinary humans in the process of evolution. One should also notice that all the children in Village of the Damned were blond. This is not the case with Children of the Damned. This movie is well acted and suspenseful. It is a solid piece of early 60's black and white horror. In my opinion, it is not quite as good as Village of the Damned for two reasons, the first one being that the story is very vague about the cause of the children's existence and what is motivating them to terrorize people. The second reason is that this movie is simply not as creepy as Village of the Damned. All that having been said, It's still a great movie if you like old sci-fi and horror flicks, so definitely see it!