What makes it different from others?

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Somebody had already pipped me to my review title but I'll be Damned if I have to think of a new one! Oliver Reed, one of England's finest, plays King, the psychotic leader of a gang of thugs in Weymouth. When his 20 year old sister falls for the charms of a middle aged American he is not happy and sets about splitting them up, at any cost, but this leads the three to become mixed up in a top secret British programme about raising radioactive kids for the inevitable nuclear holocaust! Yes, it may sound a bit daft but Hammer have done a great job here. It's a far cry from the gothic horror that the studio are most famous for but this is more scary on the grounds that this is far more believable and was made at a time when the real threat of WW3 was high. I think filming it in b&w instead of colour adds to the believability as many similar sci fi thrillers - and of course newsreels - were also b&w at the time. Acting is generally good and fantastic use is made of the coastal locations. It's a pretty bleak film but full credit to Hammer for this one.

Hammer Films were noted for their horror and science fiction productions, but this is one of their more curious offerings, made in black-and-white rather than Hammer's more usual colour. The action takes place in the South Coast seaside town of Weymouth and the neighbouring promontory of Portland Bill. There are two strands to the plot. The first deals with the curious relationship between Simon Wells, a middle- aged American tourist, and Joan, a beautiful 20-year-old local girl. The first time they meet she lures him into a brutal mugging at the hands of her brother, King, and his gang of hooligans. (With their motorbikes and black leather jackets the gang appear to be part of the Rocker subculture; during the sixties the Rockers and their Mod rivals often used to congregate in seaside resorts, especially in Southern England).Despite this unfortunate start to their relationship, romance later blossoms between Simon and Joan, largely because she sees him as a way of escaping from her jealous, possessive brother who will not allow any man to show any interest in her. The script, in fact, implies a possible incestuous attraction towards Joan on King's part, but in the early sixties this could never be made too explicit.The second strand to the plot concerns the military base on Portland Bill and the sinister experiments being carried on there. The film was based on a novel entitled "The Children of Light", but the film itself was given the title "The Damned" (alternately "These Are the Damned"), possibly in order to suggest a link with John Wyndham's novel "Village of the Damned" and the film made of it in 1960. No such link actually exists- "The Children of Light" was written by one H.L. Lawrence, not by Wyndham- but both feature a mysterious, otherworldly group of children who appear different from normal humans.The children here are being held prisoner in an underground bunker beneath the military base, isolated from the outside world and from all contact with outsiders. They are being educated by a scientist named Bernard, but he only contacts them via closed circuit television, never in person. We learn that the children's peculiarities are due to their pregnant mothers having been exposed to radiation in a "nuclear accident", although it is never explained how this happened. (The children are all aged 11 and, as the film was made in 1961, but not released until 1963, this implies that they must have been conceived around 1949/50, a time when Britain had neither nuclear weapons nor civilian nuclear power). The two strands become linked when Simon and Joan are forced to enter the base in order to escape pursuit by King and his gang. When, however, they stumble upon the children they find that their lives are in danger.The film's main weakness is the difficulty in uniting its two different plot strands into a coherent whole. It starts off as a sociological examination of British youth culture in the early sixties, something akin to "Beat Girl" which also starred Shirley Anne Field and Oliver Reed, and ends up as a science-fiction thriller about clandestine government activities in the nuclear age. The idea was presumably to imply some sort of parallel between the violence perpetrated by King and his gang and the violence perpetrated by the state, but this is never really convincing. The relationship between Simon and Joan never really rings true either; it might have been better if they had been closer in age.Indeed, it might have been better if the film had concentrated more on the imprisoned children and less on the Simon/Joan/King storyline, as it is this part of the story which contains the most original elements. The film was made a year before, and released a year after, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and its themes fit in well with the nuclear anxieties of the sixties. The force which drives Bernard's every action is his conviction that a nuclear holocaust is imminent, and in 1961 there would have been many who shared his fears, even if few would have shared his ideas about how civilisation could be rebuilt after such an Armageddon. The director Joseph Losey was an American Communist who had fled to Britain after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and he may have been attracted to this story as an example of the sort of film he might not have been allowed to make had he remained in America. Losey's sharp black-and-white photography brings a grimly compelling quality to the film, especially to the scenes dealing with the doomed children. Overall, however, "These Are the Damned" never really succeeds in joining together its two incompatible story lines and wastes too much time on the first, resulting in a broken-backed feel to it. To paraphrase Eric Morecambe, "You can see the join!" 6/10

This will always be one of my favourite films which I play every now and again. For me the punchy but low key introductory theme music Black Leather Rock sets the mood and I am amazed that no one seems to know who sang it. I have long considered this to be one of Hammer's finest offerings, a film with an intriguing plot, nice outside location shots and of course the cast. One of the things that I invariably find disappointing when reading the biographies of actors is how little mention is often made of a particular film. Oliver Reed I recall, made little mention of this film in a biog I once read - and he was more sober in those days. A number of interesting books are now available about some period films eg the Dambusters and one might hope that someone with all the right connections could write about this one. I for one would buy it. Any ideas on the vocalist anyone? Shaun

This movie is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand its a quite maintaining and also original movie within its genre but on the other its also a quite messy one, that screams wasted potential.Seriously, in the hands of a more capable director and with some more money behind it, this movie could had been such a fascinating and classic one within its genre. Lots of the right ingredients are there but they are however often wasted by its messy way of storytelling.This really is the biggest problem of the movie. For about 80% of its running time, I had absolutely no idea what was happening. It's because the 'mystery' of the movie gets revealed and explained really late on into the movie and before that, the movie is filled with lots of moments that in the long run have absolutely nothing to do with the story at all. Same goes for some of the character really. It makes the movie at times really messy and unnecessarily confusing to watch. It takes away lots of the pleasure from watching this movie but even worse is that it kills off lots of the potential that this movie showed with its concept.The movie is being the type of science-fiction thriller that became mostly popular later in the '70's. It's a story that tries to pick a more realistic approach to things, as if in nothing that gets featured in this movie couldn't potentially happen in real life as well. I honestly like these sort of movies but this movie just really isn't the best example of the genre its possibilities and its great and most fascinating aspects.It could had all worked out much better within this movie if it had only been more tense and mysterious. The movie now is only mysterious in the sense of not ever really explaining anything, until the end. But this just doesn't really work out well for the movie. The tension and mystery of the movie just often falls flat, which perhaps is also being somewhat due to the fact that the movie doesn't really have strong or likable characters in it. The only really good character in this movie is played by Oliver Reed but he's being somewhat of a villain, so not one of the main 'heroes' or leading characters.But still, the movie remains a mostly good watch. This is mostly due to its concept, that is being still original, despite the fact that it doesn't get exploited and used to its full potential. Nevertheless, the movie remains a good 'different' watch and I think that the lovers of science-fiction thrillers shall still most likely enjoy this movie, just like I, despite everything, still did.Just don't expect, just because the Hammer studios name is attached to this, that this movie is going to be a tense, atmospheric one. The atmosphere and setting have basically nothing in common with the typical and distinctive Hammer studios atmosphere or style of film-making. In a way this movie is being much more like Hammer's earlier production, such as all of the 'Quatermass' movies.Just give it a shot. Chances are you might end up liking it, despite all of its flaws and all of its obvious wasted potential. It's still an interesting and honestly also, good watch.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/