Village of the Damned (1995 film)

John Carpenter's
Village of the Damned

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Carpenter
Produced by Michael Preger
Sandy King
Written by Screenplay:
David Himmelstein
Novel:
John Wyndham
Starring Christopher Reeve
Kirstie Alley
Linda Kozlowski
Mark Hamill
Michael Paré
Meredith Salenger
Music by John Carpenter
Dave Davies
Cinematography Gary B. Kibbe
Edited by Edward A. Warschilka
Production
company
Alphaville Films
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates
  • April 28, 1995 (1995-04-28)
Running time
 99 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $22 million
Box office $9.4 million (domestic)[1]

John Carpenter's Village of the Damned is a 1995 science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter. It is a remake of the 1960 film of the same name which in turn is based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. The 1995 remake is set in Northern California, while the book and original film were both set in the United Kingdom. The 1995 film was marketed with the tagline, "Beware the Children", and stars Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Pare, Mark Hamill, and Meredith Salenger. In a 2011 interview Carpenter described the film as a "contractual assignment" which he was "really not passionate about".[2]

Plot

The quiet coastal town of Midwich in California's Marin County is invaded by an unseen force which leaves ten women mysteriously pregnant. Nine months later, the babies are born simultaneously on one night, though one is stillborn. At first, they all appear to be normal, but it does not take the parents long to realize that their children are anything but normal. As they grow older, the children are shown to have pale skin, white hair, fierce intellect and steely, cobalt eyes. However, they also do not appear to possess a conscience or personalities. The emotionless children display eerie psychic abilities and remarkable powers, which they use with deadly consequences, unleashing a reign of terror. When they actively use their mind-control powers, their irises or their entire eyes glow in different colors, mostly reddish-orange, but also green, yellow, violet, blue or pure white.

The children soon "pair off," except for one of the boys, David, whose intended partner was the stillborn baby. As a result, he shows human compassion while still resembling the other children and retaining some degree of psychic powers. This leads to David not fitting in well with the rest of the alien offspring. Their leader, Mara ("daughter" of a local physician, Dr. Alan Chaffee; her mother, Barbara, commits suicide by walking off an ocean cliff), considers him less important due to his expression of emotions and expression. Because of his childhood loss, he understands what the other children do not: pain. He and his mother Jill McGowan (the local school teacher) share a brief conversation about this, with David understanding that if he feels pain, he can understand others' pain also, displaying empathy and remorse the other children do not. When the other children experience pain, they simply use their powers to inflict the same pain on the adult responsible for the pain.

Soon it is revealed that there are other colonies of psychic children in foreign countries, but they were quickly eliminated because their "parents" realized that they were evil. The scientific team at Midwich quickly flees the town to escape the chaos. However, the lead government scientist, Dr. Susan Verner, is killed by the children after being forced to show them the preserved unborn corpse who was intended to be David's partner. Susan has secretly kept it so that she could perform an autopsy and study it. A mob of angry townspeople attempt to stop the children, but the latter use their powers to kill the leader of the mob, causing the other townspeople to flee quickly. The State Police and the National Guard are then sent out to kill the children, who instead hypnotize them into shooting each other in a chaotic gun battle.

In order to rid the town of the children, Alan devises a plan: to detonate a briefcase of explosives inside the children's classroom. By thinking of a brick wall, he is able to create a mental barrier and keep the presence of the bomb a secret from the children. Jill begs him to save David (because he is not like the others), and Alan agrees. He attempts to do this by asking David to leave the classroom to get his notebook from his car. The children begin to suspect that Alan is concealing something from them, and begin to assault his mind, slowly eating away at his defenses (symbolized by pulling bricks out of the wall). Finally, Jill shows up, but the children stop her. David, angered by this, rushes to her defense and knocks Mara over. The children turn on David, but Jill rushes him from the building. At last, within a few seconds of the end of the bomb countdown, the children tear down the wall and see the image of Alan's briefcase...and then the bomb inside. A moment later, the explosives detonate, destroying the barn and killing everyone, including Alan.

Jill and David survive the massacre; she says that they will both move to a place where nobody knows them. David, riding in his mother's car, looks off into the distance as they drive away.

Production

Unlike its predecessor, the film was shot in widescreen color. Lloyd Paseman of the Eugene Register-Guard said that the shooting in widescreen color and the fact that major actors such as Christopher Reeve and Kirstie Alley were a part of the film made it so that the film was "anything but cheap".[3] Additional graphic violence was added in the remake; the children cause one adult to kill herself by cutting herself open with a surgical knife and another has an adult immolate herself.[3]

John Carpenter moved the story from England to Northern California and set it in the contemporary time period. The film was shot in color. He gave female characters larger roles in the story. Paseman said that aside from those moves, the film "made no attempt to update his source material" and that the film was "not unlike most of the science-fiction/horror movies Hollywood churned out for a mostly teen-age audience during the 1950s and into the early '60s."[3]

If the children apply moderate psychic powers, their pupils have the appearances of red or green-flecked pupils, and the color becomes a bright white when they apply strong psychic powers.[3]

Charlotte Gravenor, the hairstylist, bleached the hair of the actors who played the children, and then applied white hairspray to their hair. This made them appear like aliens. Bruce Nicholson and Greg Nicotero applied a special effect where the eye pupil colors change when the children seize control of the adults. Paseman said that the eye effect was "less impressive" than the hair effect.[3]

Main cast

The children

Reception

In addition of being a failure at the box office, the film received mediocre critical response. Based on 34 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Village of the Damned holds a 29% approval rating from critics, with an average score of 4 out of 10.[4] In 1996, the film was nominated at the 16th Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.[5]

Lloyd Paseman of the Eugene Register-Guard said that while the remake did not attempt to make Village of the Damned "something" that its predecessor was not, the film had "mediocre" dialogue and plot development.[3] He gave it two stars out of four.[3] Paseman also remarked that in this film Reeve made an "earnest" attempt, that Kozlowski did the highest quality acting for the film, that Dekker was "credible," and that Hamill was "badly miscast."[3]

Janet Maslin of the New York Times was more enthusiastic, regarding it as "John Carpenter's best horror film in a long while" The remake was "mostly more sly than frightening..restaging the original story with fresh enthusiasm and a nice modicum of new tricks."[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Village of the Damned domestic gross", www.thenumbers.com. Retrieved 09-14-2015.
  2. ↑ http://www.vulture.com/2011/07/john_carpenter.html
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Paseman, Lloyd. "Village Of The Damned' Has Mediocre Plot, Acting." Eugene Register-Guard. Friday May 5, 1995. 10F. Retrieved from Google News (28 of 28) on April 7, 2013.
  4. ↑ Village of the Damned (1995). Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  5. ↑ Wilson, John (2000-08-23). "1995 Archive". Golden Raspberry Award Foundation. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  6. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990CE7D71238F93BA15757C0A963958260

External links


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