There was a time, if oft-quoted legends are to be believed, when an Englishman could leave his home unlocked without fear of being robbed blind by hoards of smacked-up hoodies. Indeed, so pervasive were English good-manners that we managed to conquer a third of the globe with them. Nations cowered not before our fleets and armaments but in deference to our irresistible gentility. Is it coincidental that the arrival of The Beatles and the ‘permissive society’ heralded the decline of our Empire? I think not.
The triumph of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, and of this 1960s adaptation, is that they perfectly portray the supposed security of this era whilst using its very gentility as the most effective weapon against it. The calm and tranquillity of Midwich, and the similarly ordered lives of its inhabitants, act as blinds to the contemporary themes Wolf Rilla chooses to emphasise from the book. Most obvious amongst them is how society deals with subversion from within. Unlike (too) many horror films the majority of the village residents are more than aware of the threat posed to them by the children so no time is wasted pointlessly establishing any menace.
Instead-and this is VOTD real strength-the problem of what should, and indeed can be done provides the ultimate moral dilemma to our protagonists. The struggle between balancing liberty and security is never an easy one, especially so when your enemy is psychic. It is perhaps fitting that the Professor is ultimately called upon to solve a problem he was instrumental in worsening. But, so understandable is his minority opinion in the debates leading up to this that one cannot help but admire his eventual conversion and share his regrets that things didn’t work out differently.
The ‘dayout’ afflicting Midwich is wonderfully conceived and majestically portrayed. Intertwining it with the opening credits (reminiscent of the opening to Day of the Dead) ratchets up the tension brilliantly, as well as giving the film a thoroughly modern feel. This is built upon by Geoffrey Faithfull’s stylish cinematography during these initial scenes. The use of rapidly changing and varied camera angles, peppered with scenarios designed to capture the magnitude of the ‘dayout’ give VOTD a surprisingly fresh feel for a film released in 1960.
The cast and script are perfectly attuned to do this, having an archetypal period feel on the one hand but again managing to feel perfectly fresh on the other. This is undoubtedly one of the best acted films I’ve seen for a long time, with George Sanders and Martin Stephens injecting their clashes with a disconcertingly effective sense of impending menace.
This sometimes comes at the expense of the minor characters, but they’re so intriguing that this neglect is rarely overly conspicuous. A little more character development might have been beneficial though, especially given the seeming randomness of the fate dealt out to Midwich and the other communities around the world. The quality of the performances arouses a natural curiosity in the characters being portrayed, and tantalizing tit-bits of information are all too often skipped over. It would be instructive, for example, to know why Professor Zellaby left marriage until so late in life. This is obviously of importance in light of his subsequent reluctance to see the true nature of the children and could perhaps have been explored more. However, these trifling shortcomings only arise because Village of the Damned is a quality production in every other respect.