Cast and Crew: Sterling Silliphant (Screenplay); Ron Goodwind (Score); Martin Stephens, Barbara Shelley

What It’s About: The village of Midwich is mysterious cut off from the rest of the world.  Anyone that enters instantly falls into a deep sleep. Months later every woman of child-bearing age in the village is pregnant, and all the pregnancies date to that time. The children develop incredibly quickly, seem to share a hive mind, and are extremely strong-willed with little regard for those outside of their group.

After discovering that the same phenomena has occurred in several other areas across the world, the military is ready to intervene and take the children out of the village.  Local scientist Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) convinces them to keep the children under his watch, moving them to a special school he runs. Can Gordon teach the children humanity?

Why Watch it Today?: In the book, at least, the village is cut off from the outside world on September 27th.  Village of the Damned is high-class British science fiction/horror at its best, from author John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, with a great build up and a tense finale.