| Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.) Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Children of the Damned (1964) | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 23 2011, 06:12 AM (375 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Apr 23 2011, 06:12 AM Post #1 |
|
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Scientific studies in the intelligence of children worldwide point to six children from various countries who all scored phenomenally higher than even adults can score; not only that, they all got identical scores. They're brought to London for study, but that's not a smart move: they're a pooled intelligence (when one learns something, they all know it); they have a mind control power that's unstoppable, particularly when they're together; and when threatened, they do very bad things. Or rather, they make people do very bad things. Holed up in an wrecked church for protection, they ward off attempts by authorities to coax them out. A good movie, but.... what th' heck? Taken on its own, it never explains anything: scientists guess that all six children are some sort of simultaneous mutation, millions of years advanced. But why are the children - who profess when asked that they simply don't know who they are or why they're here - building a machine that appears to be listening for messages from outer space? The answer lies in the 1960 film Village of the Damned; in that one, the children - all born in the village of Midwich, England, at the same time - are a vanguard of an invasion from outer space. That plot didn't work out so well, thanks to George Sanders, so this time, apparently, our unknown invaders have scattered the children around the globe. This movie doesn't explain any of that; maybe we're suppose to have a pooled intelligence and just know it, or maybe MGM thought the belatedness of the sequel (nearly five years after the original) meant that people wouldn't remember, so they should just ignore the earlier events. It works if you've seen the earlier film (which is on the same DVD, after all) but if you haven't, you may end up wondering what th' heck is going on. Ian Hendry, Alan Badel, and Barbara Ferris star; there is some Cold War politics mixed in, some ugly deaths, and in the end, you'll actually kind of feel bad for the children, who after all were just protecting themselves, sort of. We also watched Daffy Duck in Hollywood, a good early Duck cartoon in his so-wacky-it-hurts period; episode six of Undersea Kingdom (Crash & Billy get shot off of a tightrope; ouch); a short subject showing how garbage disposals work (we'll watch anything) from General Electric; and the video for Barenaked Ladies singing "Get in Line". Fun night. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
![]() |
|
| panzer the great & terrible | Apr 23 2011, 06:30 AM Post #2 |
|
Mouth Breather
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
What I always wondered about this movie is, if they all share the same knowledge anyway, why is it dangerous to bring them together? Anyway, both movies are a letdown if you've read John Wyndham's excellent novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The movie of his Day of the Triffids was an even worse betrayal. Poor guy. He's one of the very best sci-fi writers, maybe even the best of all, but the movie people just had to dumb his stuff down. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
![]() |
|
| Laughing Gravy | Apr 23 2011, 06:45 AM Post #3 |
|
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I did read Midwich Cuckoos a long time ago, and I agree, it was excellent. That said, the first film is a classic, and the second is good - the first tells you everything, the second leads you to figure it out on your own, which is okay in this case. The children are shown to only be able to control one person at a time; when they are together, they can control several. By the way, it should be mentioned that for ultimate dumb, there was a 1995 remake of Village with Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Mark Hamill, and Cody Dorkin (who now lives here in Sac and is a friend of mine, sorry, Cody). Yikes. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
![]() |
|
| panzer the great & terrible | Apr 23 2011, 06:02 PM Post #4 |
|
Mouth Breather
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I would say "classic" is too strong. It's a good movie. You see it once, you've seen it; a classic is a movie you want to see again. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
![]() |
|
| Laughing Gravy | Apr 23 2011, 08:24 PM Post #5 |
|
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Well, the original "Village" is a film that I've re-visit every few years on FNF, and enjoy it every time. It's very well done. "Creature from the Black Lagoon" is not a good movie, and we enjoy it over and over because it's, well, it's enjoyable. "Village" we enjoy over and over because it's, well, it's good. I think it's a classic. Anybody else? |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · Shock Theatre · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z2.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)



12:20 AM Jul 11