"Beware The Eyes That Paralyze!" First there was Village Of The Damned (1960) that introduced the horror film public to those quite polite children with the super-mental powers and the glowing eyes. (There was a sequel, Children Of The Damned (1963), with a different cast and setting which is generally considered inferior to the original film.) In 1995, John Carpenter, on a horror-remake roll, churned out his own take on this classic chiller, also entitled Village Of The Damned. Made during different eras with vastly different budgets, just how do these films compare? Our own Jeff Beres volunteered to look at both "Damned" films and compare and contrast. He found that no matter how you film them, there's no escaping the hypnotic fascination we all have with...
By JEFF BERES
(The following article does contain "spoilers.")
Village of the Damned – (1960) Directed by Wolf Rilla; starring George Sanders and Barbara Shelley.
Village of the Damned – (1995) Directed by John Carpenter; Starring Christopher Reeve and Kirstie Allie.
Plot Summary: A fog or chemical puts a
whole town to sleep for a few hours. A few months later, all
fertile women in the town are pregnant. They bear strange, blonde
children with psychic powers who were obviously
"fathered" by aliens, kinda like the song "Radar
Love." Then a doctor, whom they trust, kills them with a
hidden bomb. The ’95 version left one child alive for the
"Sequel That Never Happened."
There are many ways to compare these two films. Old vs. New; Low budget vs. Big(ger) budget; British vs. American; Effective vs. Ineffective. I think the most fun way is the Effective vs. Ineffective comparison.
Now I’m making the assumption that I know everything and I’m always right. With that as a given, let’s try to figure out why one film works and one film doesn’t. (Let’s define the term "works" as creating a feeling of suspense and horror in the audience.)
Which one works? To me, the original 1960 version is more effective than the 1995 remake.
The reasons are:
The remake takes a long time to get going. The event that gets a film rolling is called a plot point. The plot point in both versions of "Damned" isn’t the gassing of the town but the impregnation of the women. The original develops this point about 15 minutes into the film. The remake
takes its time and develops ancillary characters first. One of the characters, whom we’re led to believe is the protagonist, is pointlessly killed during the gassing. This killing may subconsciously turn us against the filmmakers. Like, "Hey, man, you’re not playing by the rules." Joseph Campbell taught us that we, as an audience, expect certain things to happen as a story unfolds. If these expectations aren’t fulfilled, the story becomes less enjoyable to us.
There’s a certain creepiness to the original that’s lacking in the remake. One scene in the original shows George Sanders’ "Damned" son, David, giving George the assignment of making arrangements for the children to escape from the town because the town officials are plotting against them. After coolly giving his father this order, David says, "Goodnight, Father" and marches up to bed. The contrast is chilling.
There’s another sequence with a puzzle box that all the children can figure out without being taught. These small, intimate scenes work well. They help us empathize with the parents of the kids. The remake depends on scenes of the kids walking in a group and zapping people with their eye-rays.
I found myself asking myself repeatedly "Why a remake?" What could have been improved upon in the original? It’s a bare bones, effective script and production. Special effects have improved since 1960 but this isn’t a special effects film.
The original told its theme through the story. The remake depends on long speeches. Long speeches are very boring.
Basically, the two filmmakers approached the material from different points of view.
In the original, the producers sought a personal, intimate approach; "My child’s an alien." While the producers of the remake took a more action/adventure type approach; "Those children are aliens." This second approach lost the audience empathy that made the first one work.
An addendum: In all fairness to Carpenter, I think his remake of The Thing was in many ways superior to the original and I hope to do a comparison of those two films in a future article.
Article (c) Jeff Beres.
Thanks, Jeff, for a "Damned" fine effort. We'll look forward to your comparison of the two versions of The Thing. (You can check out Jeff's retrospective on the film Henry: Porrait Of A Serial Killer, in the archived article, "Henry Redux.")
