The Damned

7/21/2019

I live with one fact. A power has been released that will melt these stones. We must be ready when the time comes. The Damned (AKA: These Are The Damned) is directed by Joseph Losey and adapted to screenplay by Evan Jones from the novel The Children of Light written by H.L. Lawrence. It stars Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, Alexander Knox, Viveca Lindfors and Walter Gotell. Music is by James Bernard and cinematography by Arthur Grant. The South Coast of England, and a middle aged American tourist, a Teddy Boy gang leader and his troubled sister are thrust together into a deadly scenario deep below the cliffs of Weymouth... Blacklisted by Hollywood, Joseph Losey moved to Britain to continue his artistic leanings. 1963 saw the release of two Losey movies, the much

9/24/2021

_**Maybe not great, but an inspired, if downbeat, early 60’s curiosity from Hammer**_ On the southern coast of England, a gang of hooligans led by a man named King (Oliver Reed) harass an American yachtsman (Macdonald Carey) and a sculptor living on the shoreline (Viveca Lindfors). Shirley Anne Field plays the gang leader’s sister who attracts the yachtsman. All of them are about to learn the secret of the mysterious government installation on the rocky coastline, headed by the character played by Alexander Knox. “The Damned,” aka "These are the Damned" (1962), is a B&W Hammer flick that mixes drama, mystery and sci-fi with a bit o’ horror. Yet don’t expect a creature feature; this is way more realistic. It was no doubt influenced a little by “Village of the Damned” (1960), but a

11/19/2024

To be fair to this, it probably ought to be watched with an eye to the times it was made - at the height of the cold war, coupled with some adventurously far-fetched science fiction and a fair smattering of state.media-sponsored paranoia. A lot of Oliver Reed's roles in the 1960s saw him as the charismatic leader of a gang of miscreants, and this is not really any different. When "Joan" (Shirley Anne Field) hooks up with wealthy American yachtsman "Simon" (Macdonald Carey) at a seaside clocktower, he assumes she is on the game. Sadly for him, she is the lure and he is mugged - quite brutally - by Reed's gang (he is her overly protective brother "King"). Next day, she meets the badly bruised visitor on his boat and they only just manage to escape the sibling's clutches by sailing from the h