Also released as
- Het Dorp der Verdoemden
- Het Dorp der Vervloekten
- Byen som stivnet av skrekk
Filed under
Village of the Damned
Village of the Damned is a 1960 British killer-child horror film directed by Wolf Rilla.
Blonde children with glowing eyes and no interest in you. Efficient, cold, 77 minutes.
goreledger editorial rating: 7/10 · Read the review
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Blonde children with glowing eyes and no interest in you whatsoever, in seventy-seven minutes with nothing wasted.
Everybody in an English village falls unconscious for several hours. Some weeks later every woman of childbearing age is pregnant. The children are born looking alike, develop rapidly, and share one mind.
Wolf Rilla shoots it as a village drama with the horror kept entirely in behaviour. The children do not attack anybody; they make people do things. The eye effect was achieved in the negative and only appears in the British print, which was the correct decision.
George Sanders plays the professor who is raising one of them and is the only person treating them as a problem to be solved.
The brick wall is the ending, and the image of a man holding an idea in his head like a physical object is the best thing in it.
Goreledger editorial rating
7 / 10
Seventy-seven minutes with nothing wasted, and the horror kept entirely in behaviour: the children never attack, they make people do things. Cold and efficient rather than frightening, which suits it.
Our opinion, not an average. How we rate
Goreledger editorial profile
Describes the film, not its quality: high gore means very gory.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Canada
Germany
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
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