Village of the Damned
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Movie Reviews of Village of the Damned
Movie Review: Carpenter's finest of the 90's!
Summary: 4 Stars
John Carpenter's 1995 hit, Village of the Dammed, is based on the 1960 original. About 10 women suddenly become pregnant in an instant and all on the same day, give birth to identical looking kids with glowing eyes. It's up to the lead role characters to find out what's up with the town and unmask the deadly satanic secret behind the village of the dammed. 2. 35:1 widescreen transfer, 5 theatrical trailers (easter egg trailers found at production notes) and cast/crew bios...pretty good DVD, movie itself, i'd give the movie a B+Movie Review: "Good Sci-Fi/Horror Remake!"
Summary: 4 Stars
Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley and Linda Kozlowski star in John Carpenter's
1995 sci-fi/horror film. After a force invades a small town, a group of kids
are born at the same time with alien powers. This is a good remake and
this dvd has nice picture and sound, but only a trailer. I recommend this.
Movie Review: If you like creepy...
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie, as expected, is creepy. Those kids made me want to re-consider having my own. It's a good movie and it has good actors. If you're a Mark Hamill then check out his portrayal of Revrend George. If you like creepy then by all means rent this movie, if you get scared easily, I wouldn't recommend it.Movie Review: "I Must Think of a Brick Wall"
Summary: 3 Stars
If horror maven John Carpenter decides to do a remake of a classic sci-fi horror film, it should be safe for fans to assume that it's gonna be great. After all, this is the groundbreaking filmmaker who turned Michael Myers into a slasher-film icon in HALLOWEEN (1978) and directed the highly revered THE THING (1982), itself a remake of the classic 1951 film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. So when Mr. Carpenter's 1995 remake of the classic 1960 thriller VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED came out, it should've been a fantastic cinematic experience for horror and science-fiction fans. It should've been. Sadly, it wasn't.For those of you unfamiliar with the basic plot of both films, here's a quick summary. In the middle of a seemingly average day, all of the residents of a small village mysteriously fall unconscious, and anyone attempting to go into the slumbering village also passes out. When the folks finally awaken, most everything seems to be perfectly normal. Normal, that is, with the exception that all of the women of the village capable of bearing children are pregnant. The mystery children are all birthed nine months later, and as they grow, it is very apparent that all of them have eerily similar physical characteristics. Also, they mature and learn much faster than the average child, which is creepy enough. But the real terror begins when they start exercising their preternatural psychic powers.
In the original 1960 film, it was always tacitly implied that the strange children were fathered by extraterrestrials, but nothing occurs in the film to blatantly prove such. This actually adds to the mystery of the origin of the children, which in turn heightens the suspense and terror...and the fun for the audience. Unfortunately, Carpenter's 1995 remake loses most of this fear-of-the-unknown suspense when it is revealed that one of the children had miscarried, and the aborted fetus, which has been preserved in the office of the village doctor, looks like the stereotypical sci-fi alien, complete with bug-eyes and an almond-shaped head.
The original film stars British actor George Sanders as the astute "father" of one of the mystery tots who eventually infers the evil nature of the village offspring and ultimately saves the world. Sanders was an accomplished veteran of both the British and U.S. cinema, and his talent and experience add a great deal of credibility to the film's fantastic plot. But for some reason, John Carpenter chose to cast Christopher Reeve as the lead in his remake. Though Reeve is an adequate actor who did a fine job as Clark Kent and his titular alter ego in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978), he just simply does not have the range or depth of Sanders and is therefore unable to pull off a convincing average-Joe hero. Add to this the tepid performance of supporting actress Kirstie Alley (TV's CHEERS)--here grossly miscast as a government scientist--and it becomes impossible for the audience to suspend its disbelief and surrender to the fantasy of this film.
Carpenter's remake of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is not without its moments, however. Gore hounds and fans of slasher films like Carpenter's HALLOWEEN will enjoy the scene where a man lies roasting on a barbeque grill. And though they are not as genuinely eerie as the children in the original film, the evil kiddos in Carpenter's remake can often be creepy little brats, and some of their scenes are quite scary.
Overall, the 1995 remake of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is a disappointment, and true horror fans should avoid it and instead push harder for the original 1960 film to get the DVD treatment. In the mean time, fans who want to spend an evening with John Carpenter will probably get more satisfaction from viewing one of his other films like THE FOG (1980) or THEY LIVE (1988).
Movie Review: Spooky Children and the Doom They Bring
Summary: 3 Stars
The atypical persona of small town existence is something wondrous to behold, not only for its rustic beauty and the down home hospitality captured within its atmosphere, but also for the potential problems that it might one day face. Sometimes these threats can be as simplistic as livestock wandering the roads and producing traffic woes or two people having a drink-related dispute, making these easy problems to surmount. Other times, however, it can range in the extremities of perplexion, birthed by windfalls of forebodance that carry scents of doom within their stead. In the town of Midwich, for example, that is what is beginning to transpire, with the strangest of the strange is being birthed - quite literally. While much of the community gathers together for a school fund-rasing event, a mysterious whispering fog shrouds one and all, drawing a border around the outskirts of the town itself and making everyone that steps within this outline fall into an unconscious slumber. This ends soon enough, but something oddly sculpted takes place soon afterward; with many of the women in town all becoming pregnant on that freakish day. This sets off a chain of events that threats everyone with woes ranging from governmental bliss, emotionless monsters, and the potential to have something take a little waltz through valleys you sometimes call self-control. To say this remake of Village of the Damned is without its flaws is something of a gargantuan understatement, because some of the pieces simply do not mesh well and hurt my movie experience therein. One point this is fairly noticeable in is the choice of casting that Carpenter chose to use, and the roles he had them play. I, for one, couldn't buy K. Alley as a government representative no matter what, with her performance lackluster at best. Still, I hate to single her out because a few other personages fit that profile as well. There are also little points in the screenplay that could have been ironed out, making the story flow faster and with a better tempo, keeping some of slower portions on the backburner and keeping my attention span from wandering. That said, there were some attributes that were very beautiful as well, such as the look of the children and the effects they had on people, plus the blank sentimentality that they seemed to always dwell within. The quality is also further accented in a cleaned up version presented here, keeping the picture pristine and even the more minute details accessible to the viewer.
For fans of Carpenter that like what he does with remakes, this would be something excellent for you to acquire. It has all the emotions that a person is accustomed to, plus some newer things he tried in the process if making the feature. If you are not accustomed to his works then you may want to wet your feet elsewhere before approaching this film, tasting instead The Thing, perhaps The Fog, or The Prince of Darkness instead of this film. Still, all in all, it was a fair viewing for individuals wanting some easy hours to burn.