Plot
Simon Wells, a middle-aged American tourist, is on a boating holiday off the south coast of England. He has recently divorced and left his career as an insurance executive. In Weymouth, he meets 20-year-old Joan, who lures him into a brutal mugging at the hands of her brother King and his motorbike gang.
The next day Joan joins Simon on his boat, and defies her overprotective brother who attempts to keep her from leaving.
Simon is willing to forgive and forget; Joan implies that the beating was inevitable after Simon attempted to pick up Joan in a bar. She describes the abuse she suffers from King whenever men show interest in her. Simon urges her to run away with him but she insists upon returning to shore. Their time on the water is observed by a member of King's gang.
Meanwhile, within the caves of the nearby coast live nine children, all aged 11, whose skin is cold to the touch. They appear healthy, well-dressed and intelligent but know little about the outside world. Their home is under continuous video surveillance and they are educated via closed circuit television by Bernard, who deflects questions about their purpose and their isolation with promises that they will learn the answers someday. The children are regularly visited by men in radiation protection suits.
That night, Joan and Simon meet at a cliff-top house where they have sex. The house is surrounded by King's gang but the couple escape and reach the relative safety of a nearby military base. The couple descend the cliff to the beach, pursued by King. They find a network of caves leading to an underground bunker attached to the military base, where they meet the children.
Although Bernard is forced to keep the children under watch, he allows them one chamber in the caves without cameras. The children are unaware that their "secret hideout" is known to their captors and they keep there mementos of people that they believe are their parents. The children host Joan, Simon and King in this "secret" room and smuggle food to them. Joan and Simon plan to rescue the children and they pressure King into helping them; the visitors soon feel unwell.
Bernard urges the children to give up their new friends, and reveals his knowledge of their secret place. The children refuse and destroy the surveillance cameras. Bernard sends men in radiation suits but King and Simon overpower them. Simon uses one of their Geiger counters and discovers that the children are radioactive. The intruders lead the children out of the caves but they are ambushed by more men in radiation suits and most of the children are taken back to the bunker.
King grabs one of the boys and escapes in a stolen car. He is overcome by radiation sickness and orders the boy out of the car. The boy is immediately recaptured. King is pursued by a helicopter, loses control of the car and is killed. Joan and Simon escape by boat, but they are also overcome by sickness. A helicopter hovers above as their boat drifts off course; the pilot has orders to destroy it once the occupants are confirmed dead.
Bernard confides in his mistress Freya that he regrets the children now know they are prisoners. They were born radioactive, the result of a nuclear accident. This enables them to be resistant to nuclear fallout and so they will survive the "inevitable" nuclear war to come, according to Bernard. When Freya rejects him and his plan, he kills her. The final scene depicts holiday-goers enjoying the beach, unable to hear the desperate cries of the imprisoned children nearby. [7]
Release
The film was shot in May–June 1961, and was reviewed by the British censors on 20 December 1961, who gave it an X certificate without any cuts. [1] The film was not released in Britain until 20 May 1963, when it was shown at the London Pavilion as the second half of a double bill of X-rated horror films. [16] In spite of the discreet release, it was noticed by a film critic from The Times , who gave it a very positive review, stating that "Joseph Losey is one of the most intelligent, ambitious and constantly exciting film-makers now working in this country, if not indeed in the world—The Damned is very much a film to be seen, for at its best it hits with a certainty of aim which is as exciting as it is devastating, and hits perhaps in a place where it is important we should be hurt." [17]
When it was released in the United States in 1965, as These Are the Damned, it had been cut to 77 minutes. [18] It was originally shown as part of a double bill with Genghis Khan . [19] A complete print was released in US art house cinemas in 2007.
On 15 January 2010, it was released on DVD as part of the Icons of Suspense Collection from Hammer Films. [20] The Damned was called "the highpoint of the first wave of the British postwar Science Fiction films". [21]
Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
Accident is a 1967 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Harold Pinter, it is an adaptation of the 1965 novel Accident by Nicholas Mosley. It is the second of three Losey–Pinter collaborations; the others being The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971). At the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, Accident won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury award. It also won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
Cyril Raker Endfield was an American film director, who at times also worked as a writer, theatre director, magician and inventor. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he worked in the New York theatre in the late 1930s before moving to Hollywood in 1940.
Dean Jagger was an American film, stage, and television actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
X the Unknown is a 1956 British science fiction horror film directed by Leslie Norman and starring Dean Jagger and Edward Chapman. It was made by the Hammer Film Productions company and written by Jimmy Sangster. The film is significant in that "it firmly established Hammer's transition from B-movie thrillers to out-and-out horror/science fiction" and, with The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), completes "an important trilogy containing relevant allegorical threads revealing Cold War anxieties and a diminishing national identity resulting from Britain's decrease in status as a world power".
Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in human form".
The Servant is a 1963 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It was written by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella of the same name. The film stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox.
Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors was a Swedish American stage, film, and television actress. She won an Emmy Award and a Silver Bear for Best Actress.
Bernard Vorhaus was an American film director of Austrian descent, born in New York City. His father was born in Kraków, then part of Austria-Hungary. Vorhaus spent many decades living in the UK. Early in his career, he worked as a screenwriter, and co-produced the film The Singing City. He was blacklisted in Hollywood for his communist sympathies, and returned to England, where he resumed his career. Known, alongside Michael Powell, for his quota quickies, Vorhaus also worked in Europe.
Daniel Mainwaring was an American novelist and screenwriter.
Boom! is a 1968 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Noël Coward. It was adapted by Tennessee Williams from his own play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.
The Boy with Green Hair is a 1948 American fantasy-drama film in Technicolor directed by Joseph Losey in his feature film directorial debut. It stars Dean Stockwell as Peter, a young war orphan who is subject to ridicule after his hair mysteriously turns green, and is based on the 1946 short story of the same name by Betsy Beaton. Co-stars include Pat O'Brien, Robert Ryan, and Barbara Hale.
The Go-Between is a 1971 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Its screenplay by Harold Pinter is an adaptation of the 1953 novel The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. The film stars Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave and Dominic Guard.
The Criminal is a 1960 British neo-noir crime film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Jill Bennett, and Margit Saad. Baker plays Johnny Bannion, a recently-paroled gangster who is sent back to prison after robbing a racetrack, with both the authorities and the criminal underworld looking for the money.
Adventures of Don Juan is a 1948 American Technicolor swashbuckling adventure romance film directed by Vincent Sherman and starring Errol Flynn and Viveca Lindfors, with Robert Douglas, Alan Hale, Ann Rutherford, and Robert Warwick. Also in the cast are Barbara Bates, Raymond Burr, and Mary Stuart. It concerns the legendary, fictional Spanish character Don Juan and his exploits.
Eva, released in the United Kingdom as Eve, and in the United States as The Devil’s Woman a 1962 Italian-French co-production drama film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Jeanne Moreau, Stanley Baker, and Virna Lisi. Its screenplay is adapted from James Hadley Chase's 1945 novel Eve.
The Assassination of Trotsky is a 1972 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey with a screenplay by Nicholas Mosley. It stars Richard Burton, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.
King and Country is a 1964 British war film directed by Joseph Losey, shot in black and white, and starring Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted for the screen by British screenwriter Evan Jones based on the play Hamp by John Wilson and a 1955 novel by James Lansdale Hodson.
The Sleeping Tiger is a 1954 British film noir directed by Joseph Losey and starring Alexis Smith, Dirk Bogarde and Alexander Knox. It was Losey's first British feature, which he directed under the pseudonym of Victor Hanbury due to being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era. It was shot at Walton Studios and on location in London. The film's sets were designed by the art director John Stoll. It was released by Anglo-Amalgamated while in America it was distributed by Astor Pictures.
A Man on the Beach (1955) is a British fiction featurette. It was directed by Joseph Losey and produced by Anthony Hinds for Hammer Films. Based on a story by Victor Canning adapted by Jimmy Sangster, his first script, the film stars Donald Wolfit, Michael Medwin and Michael Ripper.
