Return of the Cuckoos
Once again, a small Hertfordshire village is visited by the children that terrified a generation. By Mark Burman
Friday December 5, 2003
The Guardian
Letchmore Heath was, almost notoriously, a place where things did not happen. And, but for the events of winter 1959, it would have slumbered on in quiet English anonymity. Just another neat and tidy Hertfordshire village. But that was before the coming of the unearthly Cuckoos, before the invasion, before Letchmore became the Village of the Damned.
Initially released in 1960, never issued on video in the UK and unavailable on DVD anywhere, MGM's Village of the Damned has achieved its deserved cult status, ironically, via repeated television screenings throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Forget the risible remake; this quiet, understated adaptation of John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos has succeeded in burning itself into the bad dreams of millions.
And now, decades later, the Cuckoos are back in the village they once ruled with their terrible staring eyes. Then, they were unknown, blond-haired, identical alien offspring - the result of a bit of extra-terrestrial how's-your-father that put the good folk of Midwich to sleep and all the women up the junction.
These Cuckoos nearly took over the world, or at least Macmillan's England, until good old George Sanders stopped them in their neat little tracks by merely thinking really hard about a brick wall. Well, that and a few dozen sticks of gelignite. Sanders, that cad of the movies, starts out as the perfect English eccentric but ends up a suicide bomber engaged in an act of mass infanticide that includes his own "son".
Now the Cuckoos are middle-aged and a variety of shapes, sizes and professions; caravan salesman (Peter Preidel), theatrical agent (Howard Knight), exotic nightclub owner (Carlo Cura), actor (Teri Scoble) and architect (Martin Stephens). But once they were blond, beautiful and the most terrifying children in England. Which is why broadcaster Alan Dein is grinning gleefully as they, actor Barbara Shelly and director Wolf Rilla all assemble on the picture-perfect village green.
It has taken months to track all these little devils down for a BBC Radio 4 documentary that is, effectively, the first ever biography of the elusive John Wyndham. Wyndham believed his novel utterly unfilmable and was quietly delighted with the results that Dein and his generation found so disturbing.
"I grew up watching Disney and the Children's Film Foundation," says Dein. "Children were your friends, they were fun and the grown-ups were the enemy. But not this lot. This was the first time any of us had ever seen scary children, really bad seeds, and he was the scariest of the lot. That boy gave me nightmares."
"That boy" is Martin Stephens, the baddest seed of them all. Something of a child star in his own right in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Stephens went on to essay another subtle portrait of childish menace in Jack Clayton's The Innocents. Even now, there is an aura of otherworldliness about him.
"I knew it was an unusual part. I quietly liked it... having these very adult qualities and having control over the adult. Imagine having that power - and I could taste a bit of that. You realise how powerless you are as a child. I don't think I found it too much of a stretch, that part!"
Stephens laughs and sweeps his hand across the green to point out the little lane and the brick wall that still bears the impact scars from the car and driver that he and his little gang sent hurtling to oblivion, courtesy of an intense group stare.
Wyndham's book first appeared in 1957, and this year marks the centenary of his birth. Not that anyone, apart from Radio 4, remembered in the rush to cherish Orwell. Even Penguin, who still keep all of Wyndham's titles in print, managed to forget the man who put the genetically modified Triffids in our gardens and our lexicon.
Wyndham wrote science fiction for those who really didn't want to read it. Indeed, he hated the term, preferring "logical fantasy" for a genre that was still seen by many as either cranky or little better than porn. He fiendishly reinvented and refracted a nation's experience of the second world war: a shattered landscape where fire had rained down from skies criss-crossed by deadly rockets, where unspeakable things had happened and Britain had emerged victorious.
His series of logical fantasies began sensationally enough in 1951 with The Day of the Triffids. It made Wyndham an overnight success at 47. All his years of pulp struggle and a hated stint in advertising were swept away. The Kraken Wakes followed, melting our icecaps in the process, while The Chrysalids pondered a world of genetic imperfection. But The Midwich Cuckoos was to be his most immaculate and fiendish conception.
Wyndham had spent years chafing under the demands of the US pulp magazines he had written for under the name John Beynon. They always seemed to want sex with their rocket ships, something he had resisted vigorously. But with Midwich he unleashed many dark, libidinous nightmares.
Shaking off the dead hand of HG Wells's martians, he delivered a new invasion from outer space: an invisible act of mass extra-terrestrial rape that turns the lives of all those in ordinary, boring Midwich upside down. The women awake from the mysterious "dayout" and find themselves pregnant.
Their alien offspring grow terribly quickly, seek no love and begin to bend their adult charges to their will when still in nappies. It is a hive mind of little tyrants who, despite their penchant for gobstoppers, can shred minds at will and have mankind on their list.
Hardly surprising, then, that the Catholic Legion of Decency objected to attempts to film the book, with all its blasphemous implications, on American shores. MGM duly relocated the film to England, assigned an under-contract George Sanders and gave him relative newcomer Barbara Shelley as his screen wife. The studio considered it a quota quickie with a budget of just over £80,000 and a shooting schedule of only six weeks.
Enter director Wolf Rilla. He and his family had left Hitler's Germany in 1934, and he had abandoned a promising career at the BBC for the lure of film-making. Village remains the one true success of a career he abandoned to become a hotelier in France. He says: "What interested me was not to make a fantastic film but a film that was very real. To take an ordinary situation and inject extraordinary events into it."
Wyndham, with his yearning for logical fantasy, ought to have approved. He had always thought Midwich unfilmable with its gaggle of superchildren. But Rilla devised an ingeniously simple solution, slashing their number down from 58 to a dozen and giving them all identical blond wigs. "Now who remembers having their head clamped?" asks Rilla somewhat disturbingly of his Cuckoos, now plump and mature.
We have all just finished watching Village of the Damned in the very same hall that appears in an inquest scene in the film. The clamps, by the way, had been necessary to hold young heads in place for close-up sequences relying on the film's sole optical effect, those haunting, glowing eyes, deleted from the initial UK release by the censor.
Rilla chuckles. "People always ask how did I get such good performances out of you lot. Simple - I asked you to do nothing except be still and stare. Children fidget and are never still, and I wanted you all to be absolutely still and steady and just stare. Very unchildlike, and, of course, very unsettling."
Wolf and his murderous brood have come full circle on this afternoon in Letchmore. It is the first time they have ever seen the film together since they took their wigs off. An A certificate put paid to any of the children seeing their impact on the public.
"I don't think any of us were aware of it then," says Rilla, "but of course now they remind you of the Hitler youth, blond-haired Aryan children and all that. I'm convinced that was an unintentional subtext; after all, the war was still fresh in our memories. But none of us had any idea of the impact it would make."
MGM certainly didn't. The Cuckoos were almost still-born. Not scary or sensational enough thought the front office; they stuck the film on the shelf. But a gap in the release schedule saw Village of the Damned slip out unnoticed and unheralded. There was not even a press show. But by the end of the week, queues were forming around the one West End cinema showing it. By the time of the film's US release, MGM had spent three times the initial budget on a lurid publicity campaign that warned us to "Beware the Stare that Paralyzes!"
Rilla draws himself to his feet; the projector is being packed away and the Cuckoos are starting to file out. Almost wistfully, he says: "I've made 27 films and this is the only one people remember." But how many directors can claim to have terrified an entire generation?
Whatever happened to the young actors and actresses who played The Children in Village of the Damned (1960), specifically June Cowell who played, "Nancy," the only girl to have a line, "You're anxious for us to leave, aren't you?" I was only 12 years old when I first saw it here in America (I'm 56 now) and I was entranced by June's haunting beauty. They would be my age by now, maybe older. Any information, anyone? new
See another thread in this forum. June Cowell isn't mentioned though.
Steve
Excellent excellent movie, but did not realsie it was shot in one of my favourite areas to visit when I go home, will watch it before I go back home and see what I can find.
How about this for stupidity! When I was about 11 or so my uncle said he could hypnotise me, so I told him to go ahead and try. The previous week I had watched "Village Of the Damned" and remembered the scene at the end where George Saunders tried to block out the children trying to reach his mind and I started to think about the brick wall. I concentrated really hard and was determined my uncle would not going hypnotise me. My uncle hande me a plate telling me to close my eyes and told me to rub my finger under the plate and then to rub it across my forehead. this I did remembering the brick wall and thinking you wont hypnotise me. Every command that was given to me I followed, rub my finger under the plate and then rub it underneath my right and then left eye and then around both cheeks.
After about 5 minutes my uncle said "Are you hypnotised?". Feeling cocksure I said no. He then handed me a mirror and asked me to look in it.
My face was covered in black! The rotten git had been using a candle to blacken the under side of the plate. Watch out a film could come back to get you.
Wonderful memories about a great film.
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Hooked off the line
It would be nice to see pictures of now and then i bet a lot has changed houses traffic etc hopefully not, as this seemed a really cosy village to live. The film itself was a great and a film you can watch time and time again without ever getting sick of it.
Letchmore Heath is still fairly quiet really, especially when you consider how close it is to London. We were there earlier in the year - our first visit for best part of 16 years - and it was still pretty much as we remembered it.Originally Posted by Carmel
It would be nice to see pictures of now and then i bet a lot has changed houses traffic etc hopefully not, as this seemed a really cosy village to live. The film itself was a great and a film you can watch time and time again without ever getting sick of it.
Best visited on a weekday if you can, as the tiny streets get jammed at weekends, particularly round the pub because it serves lovely grub. We made the mistake of having lunch PLUS a dessert and had to have a good stroll round the village after that.
I'll have to look up VOTD and see if I have any 'Now' pix of places that were used then. I photographed best part of the village when we were there...
Smudge
The word "Science" in the term "Science Fiction" has put off a lot of people who would really enjoy it if they realised that the best SF often doesn't involve any science. A better term would be "Ideas Fiction".
Wyndham's novels also include such gems as "The Trouble With Lichen". That explores what would happen if someone really found something that would prevent ageing. What would happen to insurance companies and pension funds?
I often wonder why it is, with the total split between science and arts in the British education system, that people who studied "the arts" so often have a positive revulsion of anything deemed scientific or technical. They are often proud to say they know nothing about science. Whereas you'd be hard pressed to find a scientist or engineer without a decent knowledge of and appreciation of the arts
Steve
Or even 'hypothetical' fiction since most sci-fi is really 'what if' premise. I thinks arts have more cultural presence since they require no understanding to appreciate it. Most technical equipment comes with manuals which can be complicated to anyone who has no technical aptitude, like woman. How many of us would learn to read music if it is required to get something from it?
Village of the Damned (1960) is going to be aired by TCM in the Philippines for Halloween and I will be recording it. I know there are a few looking for a copy on DVD, so I am willing to trade. PM's please.
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Hooked off the line
'Village of the Damned' and its sequel 'Children of the Damned' are both available as a twin set on Region 1 (NTSC) and Region 2 (PAL) DVDs... though its very pricey through Amazon UK for some odd reason its very affordable through HMV... here's the link http://www.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=285;5;-1;-1&sku=475430
'Speculative fiction' is my preferred term. I agree with Wolfgang that the 'what if' is most important and in speculative fiction this needn't mean masses of special effects . The two 'Damned' films do have the special effects, but it is their tone that aligns them to intelligent SF.
I've been a John Wyndham fan for 45 years!
I think "Trouble With Lichen" was my favorite (damn this American spelling!!) but "Andover's Android" (Aka "Andover and the Android") is the short story that keeps bugging me...as good science fiction should!
I wouldn't have thought special effects denotes sci fi films these days, there are possibly more special effects(CGI) in historical dramas such as Gladiator or 300.
"By definition Science Fiction is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculation based on current or future science or technology.
Science fiction often involves the following elements;
1. A setting in the future or in an alternate timeline.
2. A setting in outer space or involving aliens or unknown civilisations.
3 The discovery or application of new scientific principals or technology.
4 Political or social systems different from those of the known present or past. Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction" wikipedia.
I think the trouble with the science fiction genre in relation to movies is that there are a lot of films that include some of the above elements that are not science fiction at all but have merely hijacked some of the visual elements in the most purile of ways in order that the movie can masquerade as Sci Fi or they have been arbitrarily classed as SciFI just because they seem to display some of those elements. Im thinking in particular of the film "Star Wars" and how it changed the culture and perception of Sci Fi films. In my opinion Star Wars single handedly killed off the proper Sci Fi genre in movies and turned it into a childish fantasy adventure yarn, with assorted cute furry muppets and daft looking aliens like JarJar......
My favourite Sci Fi films are "2001", "Andromeda Strain", "Planet of the Apes" original version of course, "Solaris"(original Tarkovsky not the awful remake) , Farenheit 451, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Blade Runner.......I've never seen Village of The Damned but hearing the recommendations here it sounds good so I will go out and pick up the double feature from HMV and have a look!
Village of the Damned turned me into a Wyndham fanatic. I own all of the published books and many stories never properly anthologized.
Pity Wyndham never finished the sequel to Midwich Cuckoos, entitled Midwich Main.
I thought the movie slogan was "Beware the EYES that paralyze"?
This is my first time posting. My favorite Brit films are:
1. VOTD
2. Bedazzled
3. Holy Grail
4. The Family Way
5. A Fish Called Wanda
Welcome to the forum, Bretty
Your list of favourite British movies has 'Village of the Damned' right at the top but no mention of its sequel 'Children of the Damned'... is there a reason (I've yet to see the sequel... I have it with VOTD in a box set I recently purchased, and have been looking forward to it.
As somebody who owns all Wyndham's books... my favourite is 'The Secret People' possible because the giant mushroom forest is appealing to me - lol (though I haven't read all his works by any means)... what do you think of 'The Secret People' and which story is your favourite?
Village of the Damned is much better known than Children of the Damned. Possibly a lot of that is because in Village it was such a shock because children like that had never been seen before.Welcome to the forum, Bretty
Your list of favourite British movies has 'Village of the Damned' right at the top but no mention of its sequel 'Children of the Damned'... is there a reason (I've yet to see the sequel... I have it with VOTD in a box set I recently purchased, and have been looking forward to it.
As somebody who owns all Wyndham's books... my favourite is 'The Secret People' possible because the giant mushroom forest is appealing to me - lol (though I haven't read all his works by any means)... what do you think of 'The Secret People' and which story is your favourite?
Children wasn't exactly a sequel though. Rather than the result of artificial insemination by aliens, the children in Children were meant to represent the next step in evolution.
Steve
Thanks Steve... I didn't even know about 'Children of the Damned' until the DVD box set of the two. Quite excited about it because it stars Ian Hendry, who I met at his home a month or so before he died (I think he was ill with throat cancer, but I may have been misinformed - I know he died of Stomach haemorrage)... so I've always be quite interested whenever coming across movies he is in.
CHILDREN is a sequel, it's just that they reveal a new explanation for the kids -- what appeared to be aliens, wasn't. The original is the stronger film, thanks largely to Wyndham's story, but the sequel is very inventive and nicely directed. Plus i love the pairing of Ian Hendry and the marvellous Alan Badel.
Well done NappieB!!
I got hooked on Wyndham when we read Day of the Triffids in English lessons at school in the mid 60s - immediately went on to read - devour! - all the other Wyndham books in the school library - Chrysalids, Midwich, Kraken, Lichen, Consider Her Ways, etc. Been a lifetime habit ever since - Triffids is the NUMBER ONE book ever - I re-read it every year or two, regularly listen to the audio tapes and radio plays, watch the BBC TV series and avidly avoid the film (I'm the original sad old git)! The Triffids film was a complete farce, which was a pity as the Village of the Damned was so well done (I mean the original VOTD film of course!).
What's bugging you about Andover and the Android, Nappie? What bugs me is that it seems to be a lost episode - it was in the BBC's "Out of the Unknown" TV series, 1965. I've not been able to trace a copy anywhere - but if anyone reading this knows differently, please let us know!!! The story is from Kate Wilhelm's first publication - a volume of short stories, UK title "Andover and the Android", US title "The Mile-Long Spaceship". I seem to have a dim recollection of a TV dramatisation of another great story from the same volume, "Jenny With Wings", but cannot trace anything so maybe it was just a mindwarp. Anyone else remember anything on that one?
Thanks to another member of this forum, I was very pleased to get hold of a copy of a US TV dramatisation of Wyndham's "Consider Her Ways" recently - from a 1964 Alfred Hitchcock Hour series.
No doubt enthusiasts are already aware of the film "Quest for Love" and the recent BBC drama "Random Quest", both based on the short story Random Quest - and the Beeb's Wyndham documentary. And the three "Chocky" series of course.
Did anyone hear any more about the possible filming of "The Chrysalids" a few years ago - I believe the idea got dropped in the end. sadly.
Does anyone know of any more Wyndham movies or TV?
Happy to trade with fellow Wyndhamites (well, with anyone really) - discs and books available.
Unfortunately, John Wyndham is very poorly represented at the cinema. Its a great shame.
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