Children of the Damned

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Children of the Damned

Children of the Damned movie poster.
Directed by Anton M. Leader
Produced by Ben Arbeid
Written by John Briley
Based on characters created by John Wyndham
Starring Ian Hendry
Alan Badel
Barbara Ferris
Alfred Burke
Music by Ron Goodwin
Cinematography David Boulton
Editing by Ernest Walter
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Release date(s) January 29, 1964 USA
Running time 90 min.
Country Flag of United Kingdom United Kingdom
Language English
Preceded by Village of the Damned
Followed by John Carpenter's Village of the Damned
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile


Children of the Damned is a 1963 science fiction film, a 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 with notable improvements upon their design and distribution.

[edit] Synopsis

The inexplicable appearance of a group of children, advanced 1 million years beyond Mankind's genetic development, causes fear among the governments of the world. When the authorities try to take control of them, the children are compelled to respond with deadly telepathic force.

The children were indentified by a UNESCO research initiative into child development and brought to London for collective study. However International and Cold War tensions led to their governments pulling out of this pact after knowledge of the children's immense intellects spread from academic to military circles. The children escaped their embassies and hid-out in an abandoned church in Southwark, London.

[edit] Improvement

Previously the children were seeded in large, concentrated groups all with similar blonde appearances. This led in several cases to their parents killing them at birth and in others, such as in the Midwich example, developing into a cold and malevolent group organism. In this second seeding the children were geographically distributed across the globe, each with appropriate ethnicity to mask their unearthly origins. Their telepathic abilities were more finely tuned and their understanding and tolerance of humans and animals and how to control them was far more advanced. Whomever 'created' the children had clearly observed or learnt of the outcome of the original seeding and made appropriate improvements, though the previous seedings are never mentioned in the film.


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