Village of the Damned
Short description
A small coastal town in the United States is struck by an unexplained event: every resident loses consciousness for several hours, along with their pets and livestock. Some time later, the town doctor, Alan Chaffee, finds that a number of local women are pregnant, including his own wife, Jill. Ten children are born and appear healthy, but as they grow they prove alike in striking ways, with pale skin, pale hair and unnatural intelligence, and they show no warmth or emotion toward the families raising them. The doctor and a government scientist, Susan Verner, begin studying the children as their behaviour grows more disturbing and the community turns against them.
John Carpenter directed this 1995 film, the seventeenth of the twenty-two features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between In the Mouth of Madness and Escape from L.A. It was written by David Himmelstein and produced by Sandy King and Michael Preger. The cast includes Christopher Reeve as Chaffee, Kirstie Alley as Verner, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Paré, Meredith Salenger and Mark Hamill. Universal Pictures and Alphaville produced it.
Made for about 22 million dollars, the film returned roughly 9 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 5.7 out of 10 from around 37,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.1 out of 10 from 955 votes. A critics' rating of 3.9 out of 10 from 40 reviews sits well below both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- It was after completing filming on this picture that Christopher Reeve fell from a horse during a ride and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
- The film was shot in the western part of Marin County, California. Director John Carpenter owned a house there, but the influx of outsiders – the film crew – did not sit well with the locals, and they made their feelings very clear, which greatly complicated the filming. According to Carpenter, for example, a neighbor would start mowing the lawn or start a chainsaw and saw wood just when the filmmakers began shooting, and he had to pay him to do all this at another time. Several times, locals even tried to break into the trailers with filming equipment. Because of all this, Carpenter grew to dislike living there, even though he had filmed some scenes from the thriller 'The Fog' (1980) in those very places.
- Christopher Reeve (1952-2004) was kind and courteous to everyone involved in the filming process, but he maintained a deliberately cold demeanor with the children involved in the shooting, so that these relationships – as required by the plot – would be better conveyed on screen.
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