Village of the Damned (1995 film)

For the 1960 film, see Village of the Damned (1960 film).

1995 American film

Village of the Damned

Theatrical release poster

Directed by| John Carpenter
Screenplay by| David Himmelstein
Based on|

* The Midwich Cuckoos
by John Wyndham
* Village of the Damned

* Stirling Silliphant
* Wolf Rilla
* George Barclay

Produced by|

* Michael Preger
* Sandy King

Starring|

* Christopher Reeve
* Kirstie Alley
* Linda Kozlowski
* Michael Paré

Cinematography| Gary B. Kibbe
Edited by| Edward A. Warschilka
Music by|

* John Carpenter
* Dave Davies

Production
company

Alphaville Films

Distributed by| Universal Pictures

Release date

* April 28, 1995 (1995-04-28)

Running time

| 98 minutes
Country| United States
Language| English
Budget| $22 million
Box office| $9.4 million (domestic)[1]

Village of the Damned is a 1995 American science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter, written by David Himmelstein, and starring Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, and Michael Paré. It is a remake of the 1960 film of the same name, itself based on the 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. The 1995 version is set in Northern California, whereas the book and original film are both set in England. The 1995 film was marketed with the tagline, "Beware the Children".

This was Reeve's last theatrically released film before he was paralyzed in an equestrian accident in May 1995. The film received negative reviews from critics and failed at the box office upon release.

## Plot

[edit]

The people and animals of the sleepy coastal town of Midwich in Marin County, California fall asleep at a 10 AM "blackout" and regain consciousness at 4 PM. Following the blackout, ten women of child-bearing age mysteriously fall pregnant, including a virgin girl and a married woman who has not been sexually active for a year due to her husband being away for work in Tokyo. None of them seek abortions after having dreams, and all the babies are born the same night in a barn – five boys and five girls, though the virgin's daughter is stillborn due to umbilical cord asphyxia. The surviving children are healthy but have pale skin, white-blonde hair, cobalt eyes, and fierce intellect.

However, they do not appear to possess a conscience or individual personalities. They display eerie psychic powers that can result in violent and deadly consequences whenever they experience pain or provocation. The children soon "pair off" like mates, except for David, whose intended mate was the stillborn girl. As a result, David is the outcast of the group. Although he retains some degree of psychic powers, he also has the ability to show human compassion. He talks to his mother, Jill McGowan, the school principal, and begins to understand his situation. The children's leader is Mara, the daughter of the physician, Dr. Alan, and his wife, Barbara. As a baby, Mara used her powers to force her mother to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

The children develop a bad reputation in town after causing several injurious and fatal "accidents" to townsfolk, and eventually move to their classroom at a local barn for survival. Local priest Father George attempts to shoot them, only for Mara to use her powers and force George to shoot himself. Soon, it is learned that there are other colonies of blackout children in foreign countries, but due to their inhuman nature, they were quickly eliminated, in some cases at the cost of destroying the entire town. One of the scientists, Dr. Susan Verner, is forced to show the children the well-preserved alien corpse of David's intended mate she secretly kept for research. The children force her to commit suicide by impaling herself. An angry mob gathers to attempt to kill the children, but their unsuccessful efforts lead Midwich into chaos, and the rest of the scientific team flees.

Alan devises a plan to detonate a bomb inside a briefcase in 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 spare David because he is not like the others. Alan attempts to do this by asking David to leave to get his notebook from his car. The rest of the children begin to suspect that Alan is hiding something. Mara's true face shows through as she breaks through Alan's defenses, revealing the bomb. The other children look at the clock, and the bomb explodes, killing everyone inside, including Alan. Jill holds David outside during the explosion.

While driving, Jill tells David: "We'll go someplace where nobody knows who we are."

## Main cast

[edit]

* Christopher Reeve as Dr. Alan Chaffee, the town doctor[2]
* Linda Kozlowski as Jill McGowan, the school principal, and a widow who becomes the mother of David
* Kirstie Alley as Dr. Susan Verner, an epidemiologist working for the federal government of the United States, who investigates the mass pregnancies[2]
* Michael Paré as Frank McGowan, Jill's late husband
* Meredith Salenger as Melanie Roberts, a virgin whose baby is stillborn
* Mark Hamill as Reverend George, the town minister[2]
* Pippa Pearthree as Sarah, Reverend George's wife
* Peter Jason as Ben Blum
* Constance Forslund as Callie Blum
* Karen Kahn as Barbara Chaffee, Dr. Chaffee's wife
* George Buck Flower as Carlton
* Squire Fridell as Sheriff

### The Children

[edit]

* Thomas Dekker as David McGowan, son of Jill McGowan
* Lindsey Haun as Mara Chaffee, daughter of Dr. Alan and Barbara Chaffee
* Cody Dorkin as Robert, brother of Melanie Roberts
* Trishalee Hardy as Julie, daughter of Ben and Callie Blum
* Jessye Quarry as Dorothy
* Adam Robbins as Isaac, son of Reverend George and Sarah
* John Falk as Matt
* Renee Rene Simms as Casey
* Danielle Keaton as Lily

## Production

[edit]

### Development

[edit]

According to Carpenter, there had been attempts to remake Village of the Damned since Invasion of the Body Snatchers had been successfully remade in 1978.[3] In 1981, Lawrence Bachmann, who was head of MGM-British Studios when the 1960 film was made, said he was going to remake the movie. "I couldn't really do the book properly then," he said. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't talk about abortion; censorship didn't even allow you to mention impregnation. This time, we'll do it right."[4] The project wound up at Universal, who approached Carpenter to remake it. He said, "I thought, 'Sure, it's an obvious choice, it's easy, that's a pretty easy movie to make.'"[3]

Carpenter saw the original when he was 12 "and it stuck in my mind for several reasons. The whole idea of a whole town blacking out was 'Wow!' Also, I somehow got this incredible crush on one of the girls in the original. She was the first love object I had; I wanted her to zap me and take me over and make me do whatever she wanted."[3] He said, "I also knew exactly where to shoot it. I live up there, Inverness, California, and Point Reyes, where we shot The Fog in 1979. I have a house up there. It's paradise; you can stand anywhere, put the camera down and shoot, and you've got it, it's there. It's a small town, plus it's home; I get to shoot at home for a change. So off we went."[3]

### Script

[edit]

Carpenter rewrote the script by David Himmelstein. "It's a truly great novel," he said. "It's funny but in all the drafts of the script I read everybody was trying to go in a different direction from the old picture and the novel. They avoided it being about an alien visitation, strangely. Come on, guys, we've got to tell the story now. It's there. So I went back to the original roots of it. Should be pretty good."[5]

"You don't have to do much to the original, really," he said. "You've got to bring it up to date, humanize it a little and make the characters rich. When the original was made, you couldn't say the word `pregnant' on screen. So the birth scenes and the women weren't dealt with."[3]

### Shooting

[edit]

Carpenter said his relationship with the studio was "a good marriage, because we all had the same goals in mind...we all knew what story we wanted to tell. I can't tell you how impressed I am with Universal; the way they treated me, you can't get better than that."[3]

Unlike its predecessor, the film was shot in widescreen color. Lloyd Paseman of The Register-Guard said that the shooting in widescreen color and the fact that major actors such as Christopher Reeve, Mark Hamill and Kirstie Alley were a part of the film made it so that the film was "anything but cheap".[2]

Additional graphic violence was added in the remake. The children cause one adult to kill herself by stabbing herself with a scalpel and another adult to immolate herself.[2]

"It was fun to do a drama like Village, as opposed to In The Mouth of Madness, which had a little edge to it," said Carpenter. "This is more straight. This is more a baby-boomer, middle-class kind of a movie. There's nothing wrong with that; I just hadn't done one of those in a long time. If you make a movie over $10 million, you have got to try to reach out to the broadest audience you can find. If you make it under $10 million, you're able to make it more quirky, more daring, more subversive, if you want to use that word. That's the joy of low-budget filmmaking. You can be tough, you can be down, you can be all sorts of things that from a business standpoint you can't do when you get over a certain budget."[3]

If the children applied moderate psychic powers, their pupils would have the appearance of being green or red, and the color became a bright white when they applied strong psychic powers.[2]

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.

## Soundtrack

[edit]

Main article: Village of the Damned (soundtrack)

## Reception

[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2016)

|

In addition to being a failure at the box office, the film received negative critical response. Based on 38 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.[6] In 1996, the film was nominated at the 16th Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel but lost to The Scarlet Letter.[7]

Lloyd Paseman of The 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. He gave it two stars out of four. 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".[2] 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."[8]

In a 2011 interview, Carpenter described the film as a "contractual assignment" that he was "really not passionate about".[9]

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[10]

## In pop culture

[edit]

The design of the characters in the music video for M83's "Midnight City" is based on the film.[11]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Village of the Damned domestic gross", www.thenumbers.com. Retrieved 09-14-2015.
2. ^ a b c d e f g Paseman, Lloyd. "Village Of The Damned' Has Mediocre Plot, Acting." The Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon). Friday May 5, 1995. 10F. Retrieved from Google News (28 of 28) on April 7, 2013.
3. ^ a b c d e f g A Director's Dream | Movies: John Carpenter feels typecast as a sci-fi guy but admits there are worse fates.: Orange County Register. 29 April 1995: F.04.
4. ^ Are These Hollywood's Finest? by Aljean Harmetz, Special to The New York Times. 20 January 1981: C.7.
5. ^ Rowe, Michael. "master of Madness". Fangoria (140 ed.). p. 34.
6. ^ Village of the Damned (1995). Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2024-09-28.
7. ^ Wilson, John (2000-08-23). "1995 Archive" Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine. Golden Raspberry Award Foundation. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
8. ^ Maslin, Janet. "FILM REVIEW; Demons' Eye Problems Compound Creepiness".
9. ^ "The Soft-Spoken John Carpenter on How He Chooses Projects and His Box-Office Failures". 6 July 2011.
10. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
11. ^ M83 (17 October 2011). "M83 'Midnight City' Official video". YouTube. Retrieved 1 June 2023.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

## External links

[edit]

* Village of the Damned at IMDb
* Village of the Damned at the TCM Movie Database
* Village of the Damned at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
* Village of the Damned at Box Office Mojo
* Village of the Damned at Rotten Tomatoes
* Village of the Damned at Metacritic

* v
* t
* e

John Carpenter

Filmography|

| Directed|

* Captain Voyeur (1969, short)
* Dark Star (1974)
* Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
* Halloween (1978)
* Someone's Watching Me! (1978, TV)
* Elvis (1979, TV)
* The Fog (1980)
* Escape from New York (1981)
* The Thing (1982)
* Christine (1983)
* Starman (1984)
* Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
* Prince of Darkness (1987)
* They Live (1988)
* Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
* Body Bags (1993, TV)
* In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
* Village of the Damned (1995)
* Escape from L.A. (1996)
* Vampires (1998)
* Ghosts of Mars (2001)
* "Cigarette Burns" (2005, TV)
* "Pro-Life" (2006, TV)
* The Ward (2010)

|

Written only|

* The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970, short)
* Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
* Zuma Beach (1978, TV)
* Better Late Than Never (1979, TV)
* Halloween II (1981)
* Black Moon Rising (1986)
* El Diablo (1990, TV)
* Blood River (1991, TV)
* Silent Predators (1999, TV)

Produced only|

* Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
* The Fog (2005)

Discography|

| Albums|

* Lost Themes (2015)
* Lost Themes Remixed (2015)
* Lost Themes II (2016)
* Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998 (2017)
* Lost Themes III: Alive After Death (2021)

|

EPs|

* Classic Themes Redux EP (2016)

Scores and
soundtracks|

* Halloween (1979)
* Dark Star (1980)
* Escape from New York (1981)
* Halloween II (1981)
* Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
* The Fog (1984)
* Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
* Prince of Darkness (1987)
* They Live (1988)
* Christine (1989)
* Body Bags (1993)
* In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
* Village of the Damned (1995)
* Escape from L.A. (1996)
* Vampires (1998)
* Ghosts of Mars (2001)
* Assault on Precinct 13 (2003)
* Halloween (2018)
* Halloween Kills (2021)
* Halloween Ends (2022)

Related|

* Unrealized projects
* Cody Carpenter (son)
* Daniel Davies (godson)

* v
* t
* e

Works by John Wyndham

Novels|

* The Secret People
* Foul Play Suspected
* Stowaway to Mars
* The Day of the Triffids
* The Kraken Wakes
* The Chrysalids
* The Midwich Cuckoos
* The Outward Urge
* Trouble with Lichen
* Chocky
* Web
* Plan for Chaos

Short stories|

* "Consider Her Ways"
* "Random Quest"

Short story collections|

* Jizzle
* The Seeds of Time
* Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter
* Consider Her Ways and Others
* The Infinite Moment
* Sleepers of Mars
* The Best of John Wyndham
* Wanderers of Time
* Exiles on Asperus
* No Place Like Earth

Film adaptations|

* The Day of the Triffids
* Village of the Damned (1960)
* Quest for Love
* Village of the Damned (1995)

TV adaptations|

* The Day of the Triffids (1981)
* Chocky
* The Day of the Triffids (2009)
* The Midwich Cuckoos (2022)

Other|

* Triffid
* The Chrysalids (radio drama)
* Children of the Damned
* Blackbirds at Bangpleng
* The Night of the Triffids

Portals:

* Film
* United States
* California
* 1990s
* Speculative fiction/Science fiction
* Speculative fiction/Horror

Village of the Damned (1995 film) at Wikipedia's sister projects:

* Quotations from Wikiquote
* Data from Wikidata

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* United States
* France
* BnF data

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