Village of the Damned

(Village of the Damned)

In the small village of Midwich where all are preparing to feast, the residents and animals lose consciousness during six long hours. The epidemiologist Susan Verner can only observe the surprising phenomenon that a series of analyses do not explain. Some weeks later, ten women become pregnant.

Among them Barbara, Alan Chaffee's wife, the doctor of Midwich; Jill McGowan, the widow of Frank deceased in an accident the day when arrived the incredible event; Callie Blum, faithful and irreproachable, whose husband had left for a year; Sarah Miller, the sterile wife of reverend George and Melanie Roberts, a still virgin teen. Despite the strange character of these pregnancies, all decide to keep their children that born the same day except for the dead-born girl of Mélanie that Susan Verner steals during the delivery.

The following years, the children that presents the same genetic characteristics cultivate the resemblance and their mental capacity do not cease to develop. They use their hypnotic powers to provoke accidents and other suicides, as it is the case for Barbara Chaffee and Melanie Roberts. Under the ascendancy of Mara, Alan's daughter, acting in chief for the group, children dictate their laws to residents of the village. Nevertheless David, Jill's son, seems quiet different. Contrarily to the other children who displace by couples, he seems to feel more like a human. Is it because he's alone, without Melanie's dead daughter who was his devoted ?

Susan Verner who studies children for the account of the government explains Alan that the phenomenon was already observed in others parts of the globe. She explains him that they are not human beings and asks the physician to come to her assistance. Despite her capacities to mask her thoughts, children see increasingly deeply in her and they are not going to delay to discover that she stole one of them, currently preserved in the formalin.

Regrouped in a barn at the entry of the city, children, whom ultimate domination goal of the humanity becomes increasingly precise, dictate their will to Alan...

 Spoiler ! the end of the story is revealed below…

The state of urgency is proclamed and Susan will be the next victim of the children when then finaly discover the truth about her. After the abortive assault attempt of the barn by the police that ends in a bloody bath, Alan hides a time bomb in his suitcase. After an incredible effort of concentration and to the peril of his life, he succeeds to block his mental process and hides his thought to cherubs, the necessary delay for Jill to evacuate her son, the little David, who had demonstrated human feelings. But is David really different ?

DoctorSF's Words

Village of the Damned is the John Carpenter's version of the movie of the same name directed by Wolf Rilla in 1960 also based on the novel "The Midwich Cuckoos" from John Wyndham issued in 1957.