The Damned [These Are the Damned] ***½ (1963, Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Viveca Lindfors, Oliver Reed, Alexander Knox, Walter Gotell) – Classic Movie Review 2231

Director Joseph Losey’s neglected 1963 Hammer horror movie The Damned is a weird, unsettling, imaginative and strangely compelling experience. Losey mixes movie genres from biker melodrama via teen romance to sci-fi with seemingly reckless abandon but still successfully keeps his grip on the project.

Macdonald Carey stars as a middle-aged American businessman tourist called Simon Wells, who has divorced his wife and is enjoying a boating holiday on the south coast of England in Weymouth. He tries to romance lovely 20-year-old girl Joan (Shirley Ann Field), but she lures him into a mugging and he is beaten up and robbed by her Teddy boy biker brother, King (Oliver Reed in a notable early appearance) and his gang.

Carey’s Wells character then discovers a cave where creepy scientist Bernard (Alexander Knox) is keeping a group of radioactive children, whom he teaches by TV how to survive the coming atomic war.

Given the quality of the cast, it is surprising that sometimes the performances are shaky, though that is mainly among some of the young actors in the cast. It’s less surprising that the narrative’s muddled given the mix and match of the plotlines and themes. But Losey’s imagination and intelligence as a director and especially his acute visual sense keep it stimulating and invigorating. The themes it explores are universal and the movie’s weirdness turns out to be attractive and one of its strongest appeals.

Anthony Valentine is one of the Teddy boys. Nicholas Clay makes his film debut as Richard. He died of cancer on May 25 2000, aged 53. Oliver Reed died of a heart attack on May 2 1999, aged 61.

Also in the cast are Viveca Lindfors, Alexander Knox, Walter Gotell, James Villiers, Kenneth Cope, Kit Williams, Rachel Clay, Tom Kempinski, Brian Oulton, James Maxwell, Caroline Sheldon, David Palmer,  John Thompson, Christopher Witty, Rebecca Dignam, Siobhan Taylor, Allan McLelland, Anthony Valentine, Tommy Trinder and Barbara Everest.

Evan Jones bases his screenplay on H L Lawrence’s novel The Children of Light.

Beware the US cut version, which is known as These Are the Damned and runs only 77 minutes with nearly 20 minutes hacked out of its original 96 minutes and finally shown in America in 1965. The Damned is available for home viewing in the Hammer Horror Collection, which advertises it as ‘a masterpiece of suspense’.

Although the film was submitted to the BBFC in 1961, its UK release was delayed for two years after Losey refused to make a requested censor cut to a scene that showed King beating Wells with his umbrella. It was finally cut by Hammer against Losey’s wishes from its original 96 minutes to 87 minutes and the film was released in Britain in spring 1963 as the lower half of a Hammer Films double-bill with Maniac (1963). In 1965 Hammer cut it by ten more minutes for America. All the missing footage is now restored to the film for its DVD version and for TV showings.

English punk/Gothic band The Damned took their name from this film. Lord Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon, which is on the children’s curriculum, is significantly about the lone surviving member of a family who has been martyred. The film’s Working title was On the Brink.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2231

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/