Taglines: Beware the Children.
Village of the Damned movie storyline. The quiet coastal town of Midwich in California’s Marin County is invaded by an unseen force, causing a blackout for six hours, which leaves ten women mysteriously pregnant. Nine months later, the babies are born simultaneously on one night, though one is stillborn. At first, they all appear to be normal, but it does not take the parents long to realize that they aren’t.
The children are shown to all have pale skin, white hair, fierce intellect, and cobalt eyes. However, they also do not appear to possess a conscience or personalities. The children display eerie psychic abilities that can result in violent and deadly consequences whenever they experience pain or provocation.
The children soon “pair off”, except for one of the boys, David, whose intended partner was the stillborn baby. As a result, he shows human compassion while still resembling the other children and retaining some degree of psychic powers. Their leader is Mara, the daughter of a local physician, Dr. Alan Chaffee.
Mara’s mother, Barbara, commits suicide by walking off an ocean cliff. Because of his childhood loss, David understands what the other children do not: emotion. He and his mother Jill McGowan (the local school teacher) share a brief conversation about this, displaying empathy and remorse. The children eventually move to the local barn as their classroom and for survival.
John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned is a 1995 American science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter and a remake of the 1960 film of the same name which in turn is based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. The 1995 remake is set in Northern California, whereas the book and original film were both set in the United Kingdom.
The 1995 film was marketed with the tagline, “Beware the Children”, and stars Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Pare, Mark Hamill, and Meredith Salenger. In a 2011 interview Carpenter described the film as a “contractual assignment” which he was “really not passionate about”.
Soon it is revealed that there are other colonies of blackout children in foreign countries, but they were quickly eliminated due to their inhuman nature. The scientific team in Midwich quickly flees the town to escape the chaos. Government scientist, Dr. Susan Verner, dissects herself after being forced to show the children the preserved stillborn baby she secretly kept to perform an autopsy, which is unveiled as an alien. An angry mob gathers to kill the children, but the leader is set on fire and burns to death while the state police sent there are instead hypnotized into shooting each other in a chaotic gun battle.
Village of the Damned (1995)
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Paré, Meredith Salenger, Mark Hamill, Constance Forslund, Karen Kahn, Lindsey Haun
Screenplay by: David Himmelstein
Production Design by: Rodger Maus
Cinematography by: Gary B. Kibbe
Film Editing by: Edward A. Warschilka
Costume Design by: Robin Michel Bush
Set Decoration by: Rick Brown, Don De Fina
Art Direction by: Christa Munro
Music by: John Carpenter, Dave Davies
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: April 28, 1995
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