Damned Kids!

 

 (Alamy.com)

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED-1960-The English village of Midwich suffers a strange phenomena when the entire populace seem to faint away. Everyone recovers but a while later all the women in town become pregnant including virgin teens and a wife whose husband has been away for a year. When they are born, the kids all look alike with blond hair, weird eyes and are extremely intelligent. They are rather evil too and make 2 villagers commit suicide. 

Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) & wife Anthea (Barbara Shelley) are proud parents for a while until they learn this is not an occurrence particular only to Midwich. Other groups of cold calculating children have been born in other parts of the world. After the rest have died or are destroyed it's up to Zellaby to come up with a plan to stop the sinister kids. 

This MGM-British co-produced science fiction film went through many stops and starts before it came to the screen. Originally proposed as an US production the screenplay was written by American Stirling Silliphant. When director Wolf Rilla was hired he helped make the script more “English”. 

It's a great black and white weird and suspenseful film based on the novel “The Midwich Cukoos” by John Wyndam (who also wrote the novel “The Day of The Triffids”).

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The Last Poe

 

THE TOMB OF LIGEIA-1965-Local strange guy Verdon Fell (Vincent Price) mourns the passing of his young wife Ligeia (Elizabeth Sheppard). He develops an affliction toward sunlight and wears sunglasses a lot. After a fox hunt near Ligeia's tomb he meets Rowena (also Sheppard) who he eventually marries. The cloud of Ligeia's death hangs over their strange marriage. When Fell regresses Rowena to a child by hypnotism she begins to talk in Ligeia's voice. Then she has a weird dream where she's attacked by a cat and embraced by a dark figure. Fell acts weirder and weirder. Apparently though dead Ligeia (whose body was not buried but resides under the castle) still has a kind of necrophiliac spell on Fell. After Rowena seems to die from a cat attack, Fell burns Ligeia's body but she returns.... or does she?

This was the last of the Corman/Price Poe adaptations (written by Robert Towne). It was filmed in England and features more outdoors scenes than other projects. It's not bad but for me it's the weakest.

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