Children of the Damned
| Children of the Damned | |
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| Directed by | Anton M. Leader |
| Produced by | Ben Arbeid |
| Written by | John Briley |
| Starring |
Ian Hendry Alan Badel Barbara Ferris Alfred Burke |
| Music by | Ron Goodwin |
| Cinematography | David Boulton |
| Edited by | Ernest Walter |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,000,000 (US/ Canada) |
Children of the Damned is a 1964 British black-and-white science fiction film, a thematic sequel to 1960's Village of the Damned, which concerns a group of children with similar psi-powers to those in the earlier film. The film enables a interpretation of the children as being a good and more pure form of human being than evil and alien.
Six children are identified by a team of UNESCO researchers investigating child development. The children have extraordinary powers of intellect and are all able to complete a difficult brick puzzle in exactly the same amount of time.
British psychologist Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) and geneticist David Neville (Alan Badel) are interested in Paul, a London boy whose mother Diana (Sheila Allen) clearly hates the child and insists she was never touched by a man. This is initially dismissed as hysteria and it is implied she has 'loose' morals. But after a while the two men realize that all six children were born without a father and are also capable of telepathy.
The children, from various countries – China, India, Nigeria, the Soviet Union, the United States and the UK – are brought to London for a collective study into their advanced intelligence. However the children escape from their embassies and gather at an abandoned church in Southwark, London. They intermittently take mental control of Paul's aunt (Ferris) to help them survive in the derelict church. Meanwhile, the military debates whether or not to destroy them. The children have demonstrated the capacity for telekinesis and construct a complex machine which uses sonic waves as a defensive weapon, which kills several government officials and soldiers. But the military realizes that they only fight back when attacked. After psychologist Tom Lewellin makes a passionate plea asking the group return to their respective embassies, the children obey and murder embassy and military officials before returning to the church.
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Wikipedia