These Are The Damned (1962)

Quite a powerful sci-fi film with social commentary and philosophical / moral implications. Solid acting performances and good cinematography

Directed by Joseph Losey
Screenplay by Evan Jones
Based on The Children of Light 1960 novel by H.L. Lawrence
Produced by Anthony Hinds
Cinematography: Arthur Grant
Edited by Reginald Mills
Music by James Bernard
Production company
Hammer Film Productions
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Running time 87 minutes (UK), 77 minutes (US)
Budget: £160 – 170,000 approx.

Cast

Macdonald Carey as Simon Wells
Shirley Anne Field as Joan
Viveca Lindfors as Freya Neilson
Alexander Knox as Bernard
Oliver Reed as King
Walter Gotell as Major Holland
James Villiers as Captain Gregory
Tom Kempinski as Ted
Kenneth Cope as Sid
Brian Oulton as Mr. Dingle
Barbara Everest as Miss Lamont
Alan McClelland as Mr. Stuart
James Maxwell as Mr. Talbot

The children:

Rachel Clay as Victoria
Caroline Sheldon as Elizabeth
Rebecca Dignam as Anne
Siobhan Taylor as Mary
Nicholas Clay as Richard
Kit Williams as Henry
Christopher Witty as William
David Palmer as George
John Thompson as Charles


What could the following possibly have in common?

The southern English resort of Weymouth

An American tourist

A youth gang leader

His troubled sister

A top secret government facility

A shocking experiment

A group of nine children

Trailer

“The age of senseless violence has caught up with us, too”

To find out, we’ll need to begin our journey with a bird's eye view of ocean waves crashing on the remote shore below a rocky cliff on the south coast of England. Atop the cliff and along its edge we spot a collection of bronze sculptures looking like fallen grotesque, disfigured and charred human remains: Something akin to Southern England’s version of Easter Island’s mysterious stone sentinels? What do they stand as testament to? A message to a future with no one left to decipher what they had borne witness to in the dim past?

Come now and let us descend to the land of the living at the resort of Weymouth to the accompaniment of the Black Leather Rock song:


Read on for more.....