TW Visits the Village of the Damned 1960

By Owen Quinn Photos copyright MGM

Day of the Triffids author, John Wyndham wrote this book, The Midwich Cuckoos and it is one of those adaptions that has not been remade and twisted over the years. There has been one sequel, Children of the Damned and a John Carpenter remake starring Christopher Reeve in 1995.

it’s a great idea that gives a new twist to alien invasion. Instead of landing in ships, why not play the long game? If you implanted human women with alien embryos, you would be doing it the smart way. Most of us live to procreate and continue our lineage with kids. We would die for them, we protect them even after they have flown the nest. They become everything for us and in many, many cases, parents are overprotective to the point they will not even let their kids walk to school. In my day, we walked every day.

Putting your invasion force into the body of a child automatically beings them the protection of humans for the most part. You would have acceptable losses as seen in the scene where the government and George Sander’s character meet to decide what to do with these obvious super kids. The alien plan does not take in to account the many varied cultures of our world. We learn that Midwich is just one location for multiple births, all on the same day during mysterious blackouts in which women were impregnated. Eskimo women who gave birth to ten blond children with cobalt eyes may show us that the aliens did not understand human genetics completely, otherwise they would have made the babies assume their parent’s appearance. This violated the Eskimo taboos and none survived. In Australia, thirty babies were born but died within ten hours. In Russia, the men of one village murdered both the babies and their mothers while in another, the children are being given the best education available.

These kids are under human protection, seen by those in power as possible weapons despite the fact that they can wipe out humans in a second. The children grow faster than normal. Normal human kids suddenly start dying in mysterious accidents, justified by George Sander’s character Gordon Zellaby as accidents he can ignore. He sees the kids, including his own son, David as the means to bring a better world because the children dress the same, can read minds, their eyes glow making people do things against their will. This is demonstrated in the scene where Zellaby’s wife tries to bottle feed baby David but it is too hot. David is a four month baby the size of an eighteen month toddler. The other villagers do not want their kids playing with the cuckoos.

Zellaby convinces his peerrs to allow him to keep the kids in Midwich in one place so he can learn more about them. Through David, he learns that the children cannot extend their powers high enough to control planes but they are here to learn from the likes of Zellaby. They appear to be cold emotionally, aside from David, who seems the more human of them all.

Zellaby compares them to a beehive or ant colony, all of one mind. I have to say the scene where the bully takes the Chinese puzzle box from one of the children is disturbing. Zellaby has just shown David how to open it and instantly, all of the other kids know how to do it too. But when the bully takes the box to get the chocolate hidden inside for himself, both the cuckoos present turn on him. Their eyes glow and it is also credit to director Wolf Rilla’s camera angles that make the little girl in particular look almost like a demon or nonhuman. The kids grow older demonstrating the long game plan of this. is it an invasion or an alien experiment to see how their cuckoos cope in becoming rulers of the Earth. But what will that rule look like?

I recall the Twilight Zone episode where Bill Mumy’s Anthony Fremont, a little boy whose every thought controls the world. How far will the cuckoos’ powers grow and is the likes of Zellaby so blind to the fact that his son may blink at him one day and wipe him from existence? Man’s humanity and moral code is keeping these kids alive given they grow into school children who know the world fears them even though they tell them not to. So does that mean they could be a force for good after all but that moral structure will come from the people they interact with?

As kids, they lash out if someone harms or nearly harms one of them as in the case one when one is almost hit by a car. A moral person would figure out the situation. Here, it is clear this was a genuine accident. But the cuckoos immediately turn on the driver and make him plough his car into a wall, killing him in the explosion.

Mrs Zellaby witnesses it, seeing the lack of reaction from David for the death. Her memory is fuzzy as to exactly what happened. But the brother of the driver is not so confused. He demands they ask the kids. When his attempt to kill the kids is thwarted, the kids make him blow his own head off. Zellaby is there, so is his brother in law and wife. They too are frozen by the kids so they can take out yet another threat. Zellaby’s brother in law argues with Zellaby over the kids. he sees the danger. How many more threats will be neutralised at the hands of the kids’ own moral code?

To be fair, this scene shows both sides. the driver’s murder is wrong, but when they are threatened by a shotgun, they pull together and take it out. They move physically together when facing a threat. Their glowing eyes are accompanied by a sound effect and unnerving music when the children attack.

Things get more serious when the Russian town with the thirty cuckoos is wiped out because the kids were taking control, so every villager was sacrificed to end the threat.

So, our villagers do the old Frankenstein mob bit. They march on the kids’ location with burning torches intent on killing every last one f them. They make one of the villagers set fire to himself to warn the others off.

Alan, Zellaby’s brother in law confronts the kids and warns them human law is there to protect them but David replies human laws are no use to them. They are aware of the deaths of the other kids and that it won’t happen to them because they must survive no matter what the cost. Humans must be taught to leave the kids alone. His mind is ravaged by the kids’ powers. He barely survives but does so at the will of the children.

The kids are intent on staying alive even if it means murdering everyone else but maybe there is a small grain of hope here as Bernard is not killed and they made one man set fore to himself as a warning to the others to back off. Humans suffer from emotions and feelings so they will never be like the children.

Their plan is to leave and spread to form new colonies in order to expand their kind. Their plan is global and if anyone finds out, more people will die. These may be children, but they have no concept of playing or doing anything a normal kid would do at that age.

Interestingly, if this is an alien invasion, there seems to be no further communication with whatever caused the initial blackout so perhaps this is nothing more than an experiment. Or perhaps, it is a way of seeding a world with their kind and let them evolve accordingly. It is never explained and that’s cool.

Zellaby who has been the one to keep the kids alive now must be their executor without the rest of the village falling. This stoicism is the only thing that keeps the kids from discovering the bomb he carries in his briefcase. But not even he can stand the mental assault of the kids all as one, but he manages to kill them all in the explosion that saves Earth.

It is clear that left to their own devices, these children would have destroyed life as we know it. Devoid of emotions. they are the ultimate in science epitomised in human form. But is that the lesson we must take from this? Only by keeping the balance between what makes us human and driven to open the secrets of the universe, can we make any progress at all. That no one side can be the elitist in the progress of humanity because without one the other is cold and sterile.

The kids from the Village of the Damned certainly showered us the terrifying possibility that uncontrolled intellectual power alone will only doom us and any hope of becoming more than we are. But at the heart of it all is the fact, one man makes a choice we as parents should never have to. he has to kill his own child to save the world and in the process a mother, whether the baby is human or not, is left devastated childless and a widow.