Nothing to do with Village of the Damned, which was based on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. However, this film also concerns a bunch of spooky children. Alexander Knox keeps them in his cave in a cliff, where he has dosed them with radiation so that they can survive a nuclear war. You can tell that this story originated during the Cold War! Meanwhile, Macdonald Carey has moved to Weymouth from the USA to get over his divorce, and gets mugged by Oliver Reed and his biker gang. He becomes embroiled with Ollie's sister, Shirley Anne Field, and eventually the pair find themselves in the complex of tunnels running through the cliffs, leading to....THE DAMNED! Actually, you have to feel sorry for these poor kids because, due to their mutated genetic structure, they have no hope of survival UNLESS the atomic Armageddon takes place. This Hammer production was directed by Joseph Losey, who had to move to the UK after being blacklisted in Hollywood, so this tale echoes his own dislocation of life and career. Two years passed between completion and eventual release, during which the film suffered several minutes of cuts. This is a complete print, so please sit back and enjoy a very good British sci-fi story that is rarely shown today on tv. More megatons of mayhem from Sneaky Elephant's plutonium pile SOON!
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