Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Simply A Masterpiece

Just perfect...

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A most unsung and interesting movie, springing from genre to genre and winding up defeated and out of breath and out of hope by its finish. Beginning like a proto-run for Clockwork Orange, with a wildly charismatic Oliver Reed strutting his stuff as a most English thug, the film then becomes a bizarre, almost dream-logical science-fiction piece filled with musings on art, hope and the pointless of it all. Perhaps the advancing age of Carey jars a little, but aside from that, it's a fantastically successful and daring piece, with furious philosophising and nihilistic forecasts; certainly, it's one of Hammer's most offbeat films and a classic of a sort, should you tune into its wavelength, you will find it incredibly fascinating.

Simon Wells is an American tourist and falls for a young lady named Joan. Joan has many problems, one of her biggest problems is her brother King that is the leader of a youth gang. King disliked Simon, Joan ended up on Simon's boat and they landed on a military island. Simon ends up on the island searching for Simon and Joan. They end up running into a pack of very polite but strange children. Prying into what is going on, the 3 adults learn the kids are the subject of a government experiment.It's an artsy fartsy film with with an underlying social commentary of what was going on during the time era (namely the youth gangs). I found it an okay film - it's not awful. It was slow and draggy at times other times sorta faster paced. The film took a long while to get to the heart of the matter which are the children in the facility... that messed up the film for me.I agree that Oliver Reed was a very nice looking man and he did played the role of King quite well - he was really the highlight of the entire movie.6/10

The middle-aged American Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) sails in his boat to Weymouth and stumbles with the twenty year-old Joan (Shirley Anne Field) on the street. He believes that she is a prostitute but she is actually part of a scheme of a motorcycle gang to rob tourists. Simon is brutally beaten up by her brother King (Oliver Reed) and his gang. The policemen find the wounded Simon and take him to a bar to recover, where he meets the military Bernard (Alexander Knox) and his mistress Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors). On the next morning, Joan challenges King and meets Simon in his boat, and King and his gang hunts Simon down. Joan and Simon spend the night together in an isolated house and on the morning, they are located by the gang. They try to flee and stumble in a top-secret military facility managed by Bernard. They are helped by children and brought to their hideout in a cave. King falls in the sea while chasing the couple and is also helped by a boy and brought to the same place. Soon Joan finds that the children are cold as if they were dead. What is the secret of the children and the military staff?"The Damned" is a creepy sci-fi with a very dark and hopeless conclusion in the summit of the Cold War. In this period, people were paranoid with nuclear attack and the British research in understood by those that lived in that period. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Malditos" ("Damned")

Joseph Losey directed this bizarre crime and sci-fi hybrid that stars Oliver Reed as a brutal gang leader who pursues his runaway sister, who has fled with a former victim of his, whose boat they attempted to rob. They eventually all land on an isolated scientific/military base, where they discover a group of children who were born radioactive, and are being studied to see how they got that way, since if there were a third world war with nuclear fallout, the children would be immune, and the inevitable future. Trouble is, the children also have a high mortality rate as well...Definite cult item failed to connect with me at all, lurching unconvincingly from crime to sci-fi with a most unappealing story and characters.