VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995) Population: audience Oh, man. I'll say it again: there are no John Carpenter movies I actually dislike. But there are some I'm pretty indifferent to. Village Of The Damned comes as close to earning my dislike as almost any of his films have managed; only Memoirs Of An Invisible Man feels less satisfying than this one. I still haven't read The Midwich Cuckoos, or the first movie it inspired (I know, I know) so I don't know which plot points or artistic decisions are carried over from this story's previous incarnations. But still, when you're making ANYTHING, you've gotta either correct or throw out what isn't working. David Himmelstein's script was based both on that movie and the book, but I don't know whether to blame him or Carpenter for those wigs. Village Of The Damned starts well enough, with the idyllic small town of Midwich (you can tell it's idyllic because of the music) succumbing to the effects of a mysterious shadow which causes every living thing in and around town to pass out, right in the middle of the town fair. If you look close, you get to see one poor bastard passed out on the barbecue grill, before the "money shot" a few minutes of screen time later. Bad news for him, but the lucky (for now) town doctor (Christopher Reeve) is out running errands that day. When he comes back, the town is surrounded by a science team headed by a chain-smoking harpy (well, she's not really a harpy, I just wanted to call somebody that) played by Kirstie Alley. They're sending tethered people in and dragging them back as soon as they pass out. Yep, something weird's going on. Soon enough, everybody inside the zone wakes up (except for that guy on the grill) and everybody seems fine (except for that guy on the grill). But a few weeks later, it becomes apparent that ten women are now pregnant, and their pregnancies date back to That Day. Thing is, once the kids are born, everything goes to shit. And I don't mean just the events IN the movie. The cast here is like a who's-who of people who never, at least in the public eye, got past the one role that made them famous - Reeve, Mark Hamill as the local minister, Alley, Linda Koszlowski. Performances by the adults are a little scattershot; Alley has no idea what to do here, except for some really small details (she won't stop smoking even when she's in the hospital, and nobody thinks to ask her to put it out), and Hamill does his limited best. But I liked Koszlowski, and except for some scenery-chewing near the end ("You're supposed to FEEL!"), Reeve does a really good job and he certainly could've done a lot worse, for what may well be remembered (accurately or not) as the last role in which he was able to act from the neck down (he had a few other movies come out that year, but none as prominent as this). No, it's the kids which ruin this one, not the adults. It's not that they're cute, or that they're not despicable enough. It's that they're TOO despicable. I wanted to punt these kids off of a cliff even before it's demonstrated that they're evil. Particularly their leader Mara, played by Lindsey Haun as being more snotty than anything else. The costuming decisions regarding these kids are pretty hit-n'-miss; I liked that they're always wearing shades-of-gray fashions from decades past, but the platinum blonde wigs have got to go. Those are some BAD wigs. They don't even have to do anything bad, and I was already boo-hissing them. That they have incredible mental powers is cool, but you'd think that these super-intelligent alien-spawn (all conjecture, I know) could think of more interesting things to do with them than make people kill or injure themselves. I understand that they are, after all, kids, and subject to childish tantrums, but considering their super-human origins, I expected more. Worse yet, their eyes go all freaky whenever they exercise their powers. Even though this movie precedes this particular episode of Futurama by about five or six years, I couldn't help but be reminded of "THE HYPNO-TOAD!!!". "THE HYPNO-TOAD!!!" is considerably more frightening than these kids. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single goddamn movie with a convincingly frightening child performance that isn't dependent on a lot of makeup and voice-overs from another actor. Already, that's a considerable hurdle this movie would've had to have overcome to be a winner. Village Of The Damned doesn't even come close. The plot is often quite silly. Once it's established that the kids can make people commit suicide, this point continues to be driven home countless times. Thank you, I got the point around the second or third one. There's an angry mob late in the film, complete with torches and pitchforks (and, for some reason, a lot of people wielding 2x4's, surely not one of the more effective weapons you're likely to have lying around the house), which of course results in ANOTHER burnt-to-a-crisp body. At the risk of making a fairly obvious spoiler, I must add that a panicky Alley reports near the end that the government has decided to destroy the town. The movie then proceeds to forget this development. Reeve is chosen to act as the kids' teacher because he's the only adult they seem to respect. Not only is this respect never in evidence (except that they never try to make him kill himself), but it's unexplained. Some characters exist only to give the kids shit, and then die. And you wouldn't believe where this town keeps a giant propane tank, in just about the worst place you could possibly imagine for one. While this movie rarely ever works as a thriller, it occasionally works as a bit of a tearjerker, believe it or not. There are some really good moments of emotion here, like (trying not to spoil things) the disastrous aftermath of the kids' first exercise of their powers. And the soap opera between one couple, whose marriage is strained because mistrust regarding the pregnancy, miraculously works right up to (but not past) their reconciliation. For whatever reason, the fact that Peter Jason has no speaking lines up until this point only helps. But nobody watches a movie like this for the soap opera, and that's clearly not an aspect anybody making it wanted the viewers to remember when it was over. No, this is not a good movie, but Carpenter is for the most part helpless to make a movie without a really good ending, and despite a violent but kinda half-baked shootout, the final confrontation between Reeve (when did the ocean become a brick wall?) and the kids is intense and more satisfying than most of the movie behind it. I even liked the "THE HYPNO-TOAD!!!" moment when Mara tries harder than ever to pry into his mind, her glowing eyes becoming her glowing face and revealing some distinctly non-human features. I don't know how much of a "for hire" job this was for Carpenter; while he has no writing credit on this one, I seem to remember him saying he'd wanted to make this movie for some time. Maybe he made it too late, or not late enough. But it was one hell of a step down from In The Mouth Of Madness, and I also seem to recall him being quite a bit less than completely satisfied with this one even as it was in theaters. Ultimately, this movie is something of a curiosity for Carpenter's fans, and maybe a distracting enough hour and a half for those with some time to kill, but it does come dangerously close to the bottom of Carp's barrel. BACK TO THE V's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE