The Damned

1965 "Children of Ice And Darkness! They Are the Lurking Unseen Evil You Dare Not Face Alone!"
6.6| 1h27m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 07 June 1965 Released
Producted By: Hammer Film Productions
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

An American tourist, a youth gang leader, and his troubled sister find themselves trapped in a top secret government facility experimenting on children.

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Reviews

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Claudio Carvalho The middle-aged American Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) sails in his boat to Weymouth and stumbles with the twenty year-old Joan (Shirley Anne Field) on the street. He believes that she is a prostitute but she is actually part of a scheme of a motorcycle gang to rob tourists. Simon is brutally beaten up by her brother King (Oliver Reed) and his gang. The policemen find the wounded Simon and take him to a bar to recover, where he meets the military Bernard (Alexander Knox) and his mistress Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors). On the next morning, Joan challenges King and meets Simon in his boat, and King and his gang hunts Simon down. Joan and Simon spend the night together in an isolated house and on the morning, they are located by the gang. They try to flee and stumble in a top-secret military facility managed by Bernard. They are helped by children and brought to their hideout in a cave. King falls in the sea while chasing the couple and is also helped by a boy and brought to the same place. Soon Joan finds that the children are cold as if they were dead. What is the secret of the children and the military staff?"The Damned" is a creepy sci-fi with a very dark and hopeless conclusion in the summit of the Cold War. In this period, people were paranoid with nuclear attack and the British research in understood by those that lived in that period. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Malditos" ("Damned")
wes-connors Following his divorce, retired American insurance executive MacDonald Carey (as Simon Wells) goes on a holiday boating trip along the rocky coast of Weymouth, England. On the promenade, he sees sexually arousing Shirley Anne Field (as Joan) saunter by with come hither hips. They quickly decide to copulate, but she turns out to be part of a plot to beat-up and rob the middle-aged Mr. Carey. Having second thoughts, Ms. Field decides to leave the black leather motorcycle gang led by darkly handsome brother Oliver Reed (as King) and hops on Carey's boat. They run away from Mr. Reed and hide in a cliff-side bungalow. Passionately possessive of his wayward sister, Reed follows the couple in hot pursuit. The trio finally meet-up in a hidden cave which houses nine 11-year-old children. Their guardian is dictator-like Alexander Knox (as Bernard), who is seeing attractive sculptress Viveca Lindfors (as Freya Neilson)...The young children have a horrifying secret...There appear to be two disconnected story lines, here. The first resembles a 1950s juvenile delinquent film, which might be described as age versus rebellious youth. This is layered with, and eventually replaced by, an apocalyptic science fiction film. Both have subplots. Directed with some flair by Joseph Losey, "The Damned" would have been better if more connections were made. The vague ones are intriguing. The children wonder how nine of them are going to copulate; they are an uneven number. The main adult players also form an uneven number, with incest playing a part. The girl Rachel Clay (as Victoria) assumes a leadership role among the young children. The boy Kit Williams (as Henry) obviously parallels the delinquent Reed. With stronger threading, the whole picture could have been weaved into something much more worthwhile. James Bernard's music, especially the "Black Leather Rock" theme, is very catchy.****** The Damned (5/19/63) Joseph Losey ~ MacDonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, Alexander Knox
orbitsville-1 I thought I was watching Brighton Rock, but then it turned into The Chrysalids or something.If there's something off-putting for me, it's that all the hard work put into the characters' relationships in the early part of the film doesn't seem to matter one whit once the science- fictional aspect of the movie comes roaring to the forefront, with those darn kids. We have a rowdy street-tough, King, who is just a little too possessive of his lovely sister, even while using her as bait to distract potential mugging victims for him and his gang. We have Joan's attraction to a much older man, Simon, the American tourist who's vacation is about to blossom into danger. We have Freya the sculptress, who borrows this fellow Bernard's cliff- top hideaway to mold her weird visions. The characters begin to intermingle, the connections are forged, Simon and King seem destined for trouble over Joan, Freya's isolation seems destined to be spoiled...and then suddenly the quandaries of the regular people all become completely irrelevant as these bizarre kids with the cold flesh but the good manners show up and take the movie into a whole other realm. A realm of mad science, soldiers in space-suits, and a futuristic secret lab, plus eerie caves, hidden from civilization.I just feel that the downside to creating all this tension between Simon, Joan, Freya and King which is all grounded in regular stuff like jealousy, sexual attraction, and hooliganism (plus some sculptures) is that the movie doesn't need it for the second half, which has a completely different agenda. Sure, we know these characters and what makes them tick; their interactions in relatively normal circumstances (if occasionally violent or traumatic circumstances!) give us a handle on who these people are in daily life. But then daily life goes out the window, and BAM!, everyone's hip-deep in Science Gone Wrong. Does it even matter that Simon is maybe a tad old for Joan, or that King wants to smack Simon around? All that juicy stuff is built up...and then dropped for good when the movie unveils a Sci-Fi type of menace that threatens anyone climbing fences clearly marked No Trespassing and poking around where they shouldn't be. Kids always need so much attention, don't they! If you build up relationships that coagulate into a discernible plot and then just thrust those characters into a situation that has no bearing on any of the pre-established dynamics, or doesn't even require that any of those dynamics even be there--well, I think you've got a plot problem, a broken-backed movie. It's like if you were setting up a nice divorce scenario in Kramer vs. Kramer and then switched halfway through to Mars Attacks!, on the theory that showing people struggling with divorce issues makes the audience care about them more when the Martians are chasing them. Okay, it sorta works. The people seem real and we get to know them, but if we get too far into custody-battle details, then it's a custody battle we kinda expect to see resolved...not an alien invasion.Am I nitpicking? Anyway, interesting film in its intent, well acted, and it's marvelously edgy throughout--whether a street gang is bullying a tourist, or super-powered kids are fleeing from scientists in rubber suits. But this is not my favorite approach to a Sci-Fi premise. Things are a little off. Oh, and I hate the song.
Vornoff-3 A delightful piece of Cold War cynicism about a small group of radioactive children being raised by the British government to repopulate a future post-nuclear Earth. It opens with some beautiful footage of 60s Dorset, with Teddy Boys ruling the streets and the instant hit "Black Leather" blaring on the soundtrack. Even the mandatory love story has a cynical edge – the hapless middle-aged burnout falls for the shill who sets him up to get his arse kicked by the Teds, and she, hopeless and soapless herself, can't find anything better to do than fall for him. No one is right in this movie, and ultimately, we are all the Damned.