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Village of the Damned

Village of the Damned

List Price: $9.99
Your Price: $9.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Excellent Thriller Film!!
Review: John Carpenter's "VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED" is an excellent thriller film about who prevails in the "survival of the fittest". One day, a seemingly peaceful California town receives an invisible force which knocks every citizen into a long sleep. The answer to what caused the blackout remains a mystery. Soon after, ten women in the town find themselves pregnant. Dr. Susan Verner offers an allowance, provided by the government, to the people who decide to have their babies for study. Simultaneously, nine children are born. The tenth is a miscarriage, which is taken into Verner's custody. They all have platinum-blonde hair, slender fingernails, and strange eyes. Soon after their birth, a random number of accidents and suicides occur. Dr. Alan Chaffee, who's wife died of suicide, teams up with Verner to uncover the truth about these powerful children. We witness many accounts of people becoming possessed by the evil children's glowing eyes, to drive themselves to death.

Though not as promising as the 1960 original, the film makers have done an excedingly well job in creating a good scare for audiences. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good, psychological thriller. - Joey Layou Jr.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Excellent Thriller Film!!
Review: John Carpenter's "VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED" is an excellent thriller film about who prevails in the "survival of the fittest". One day, a seemingly peaceful California town receives an invisible force which knocks every citizen into a long sleep. The answer to what caused the blackout remains a mystery. Soon after, ten women in the town find themselves pregnant. Dr. Susan Verner offers an allowance, provided by the government, to the people who decide to have their babies for study. Simultaneously, nine children are born. The tenth is a miscarriage, which is taken into Verner's custody. They all have platinum-blonde hair, slender fingernails, and strange eyes. Soon after their birth, a random number of accidents and suicides occur. Dr. Alan Chaffee, who's wife died of suicide, teams up with Verner to uncover the truth about these powerful children. We witness many accounts of people becoming possessed by the evil children's glowing eyes, to drive themselves to death.

Though not as promising as the 1960 original, the film makers have done an excedingly well job in creating a good scare for audiences. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good, psychological thriller. - Joey Layou Jr.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Carpenter's finest of the 90's!
Review: John Carpenter's 1995 hit, Village of the Dammed, is based on the 1960 original. About 10 women suddenly become pregnant in an instant and all on the same day, give birth to identical looking kids with glowing eyes. It's up to the lead role characters to find out what's up with the town and unmask the deadly satanic secret behind the village of the dammed. 2. 35:1 widescreen transfer, 5 theatrical trailers (easter egg trailers found at production notes) and cast/crew bios...pretty good DVD, movie itself, i'd give the movie a B+

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Creeps instead of moral issues...
Review: Midwich was a nice, friendly place to live - until one day, the whole town mysteriously falls asleep for a few hours. A while later, the town discovers 10 women are pregnant - including the town virgin, and a wife whose husband was away.

Nine months later - all women give birth, and 9 of these babies survive. But their families (and then the town) soon discover that these are no ordinary little kids - while the white haired, bright eyed kids are quick o develop physically and seem to poses psychic and mind reading abilities, their moral values wish a lot to desire...

While the moral issues arising from this story line do get acknowledged, the writer / director team chose to go for the obvious creeps and thrills from this movie than to go into morality issues too deeply. This is a legitimate persuit, and it is a good movie as a thriller / suspense / horror movie, another production of it (looking into different angles of the story) can remake it and get a completely different result...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Spooky Children and the Doom They Bring
Review: The atypical persona of small town existence is something wondrous to behold, not only for its rustic beauty and the down home hospitality captured within its atmosphere, but also for the potential problems that it might one day face. Sometimes these threats can be as simplistic as livestock wandering the roads and producing traffic woes or two people having a drink-related dispute, making these easy problems to surmount. Other times, however, it can range in the extremities of perplexion, birthed by windfalls of forebodance that carry scents of doom within their stead. In the town of Midwich, for example, that is what is beginning to transpire, with the strangest of the strange is being birthed - quite literally. While much of the community gathers together for a school fund-rasing event, a mysterious whispering fog shrouds one and all, drawing a border around the outskirts of the town itself and making everyone that steps within this outline fall into an unconscious slumber. This ends soon enough, but something oddly sculpted takes place soon afterward; with many of the women in town all becoming pregnant on that freakish day. This sets off a chain of events that threats everyone with woes ranging from governmental bliss, emotionless monsters, and the potential to have something take a little waltz through valleys you sometimes call self-control.

To say this remake of Village of the Damned is without its flaws is something of a gargantuan understatement, because some of the pieces simply do not mesh well and hurt my movie experience therein. One point this is fairly noticeable in is the choice of casting that Carpenter chose to use, and the roles he had them play. I, for one, couldn't buy K. Alley as a government representative no matter what, with her performance lackluster at best. Still, I hate to single her out because a few other personages fit that profile as well. There are also little points in the screenplay that could have been ironed out, making the story flow faster and with a better tempo, keeping some of slower portions on the backburner and keeping my attention span from wandering. That said, there were some attributes that were very beautiful as well, such as the look of the children and the effects they had on people, plus the blank sentimentality that they seemed to always dwell within. The quality is also further accented in a cleaned up version presented here, keeping the picture pristine and even the more minute details accessible to the viewer.

For fans of Carpenter that like what he does with remakes, this would be something excellent for you to acquire. It has all the emotions that a person is accustomed to, plus some newer things he tried in the process if making the feature. If you are not accustomed to his works then you may want to wet your feet elsewhere before approaching this film, tasting instead The Thing, perhaps The Fog, or The Prince of Darkness instead of this film. Still, all in all, it was a fair viewing for individuals wanting some easy hours to burn.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Nice idea, but try again
Review: The Village of the Damned wasn't the scariest movie in the world, although I liked the idea of it. It did make me jump once or twice, but it just doesn't have that feel to it. I like horror films that I can really identify with (so basicly, I prefer ones that are set in a house). This movie was OK, but not as scary as other John Carpenter films.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Formatting - Beware the "Widescreen" caption
Review: This DVD displays the movie in widescreen letterbox format. What everyone fails to mention is this is not an anamorphic format, rather a letterbox format within a standard 4:3 (1.33:1) format. That means for those of you that have purchased high-end video gear you'll get a horrible picture. I am a bit surprised the picture quality is rated at 5 out of 5 by what I thought was a reputable institution. I consider resolution a key criteria for picture quality and Village of the Damned is definitely low-rez.

If you don't understand most of this and are content with a 10-year-old TV, buy it; you probably won't see any of the problems I have outlined here. This review is for people with current technology that want to get the most out of it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: scary children
Review: This film is one of the fine works to John Carpenter. It has a peculiar subject material and a good script. One of a small village, people suddenly lost their mind for a while, after that, some women are pregnant all together. Then they give birth to a baby who has a special power with white hair. It is a very interesting creation. These kids destroy the village and no one can control of them. Children, who are superior to other people, are made by particular power from the outer world. Finally, they live with themselves without the other people, make a wall to protect from the others. It shows that human have a compromising mind and discriminate people who are different from others. Because of this reason, in the end, the children hurt village people even their parents. This is a self-protection instinct, which is strong for them. After all, the character that beat off the children is a Superman, Christopher Reeve. He is a physician and his daughter is one of the children. He sacrifices himself to get rid of the children by using bomb. John Carpenter, he is an attractive director. His works always are unique, peculiar and interesting.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: If I was a cuckoo, I'd push this one out of the nest...
Review: This has got to be one of the worst movies of all time. The cast looked sad and bewildered throughout the entire movie, and I don't think that it was caused by their fear of the other-worldly children. No. They were terrified of what this turkey would do to their already-flagging careers. Christopher Reeves looked almost embarrassed saying the same lines over and over again for the whole 99 minutes. When the children forced Kirsty Alley to gut herself with a scalpel I'm sure that I could see a relieved smile break out on her face just before she passed on. Mark Hamil's performance was convincing despite the majority of his lines being a string of hackneyed 'these-children-should-be-damned-to-hell' tirades.

Repetition was what the movie suffered most. The original book, the Midwich Cuckoos was an inspirational story for its time, but much of the ground has already been covered to death in contemporary TV science fiction. The movie simply failed to capitalise on adult moral and social issues caused by the unwelcome visitors, or in fact the plight of the visitors themselves. For example it could have tackled the emotional issues felt by the parents by their offspring shunning then subjugating them. Instead it fell back on special effects and elaborate murders scenes. Therefore, the whole experience felt empty and dragged on unnecessarily. The whole thing could have been condensed into a snappy 30 minute Outer Limits episode and had much more impact.

I read the book as a child and really wanted the movie to be good, but it simply was not. Spend your hard-earned elsewhere and let John Carpenter forget his folly.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Beware The Children
Review: This is a very creepy and shocking horror film about evil children all born at the exact same time from various women in a small community. But as they get older, they have an ability to read and control people's minds. And when their temper is crossed, they force the adult to hurt themselves or even kill themselves in bizarre and very painful ways. Like at the scene where the little girl's eyes turn red as her mother plunges her arm into the boiling hot pot of soup. And the scene where the girl forces the eye doctor to put the stinging eye drops in her eyes.


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