The Damned (1965)

Simply A Masterpiece

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Simon Wells is an American tourist and falls for a young lady named Joan. Joan has many problems, one of her biggest problems is her brother King that is the leader of a youth gang. King disliked Simon, Joan ended up on Simon's boat and they landed on a military island. Simon ends up on the island searching for Simon and Joan. They end up running into a pack of very polite but strange children. Prying into what is going on, the 3 adults learn the kids are the subject of a government experiment.It's an artsy fartsy film with with an underlying social commentary of what was going on during the time era (namely the youth gangs). I found it an okay film - it's not awful. It was slow and draggy at times other times sorta faster paced. The film took a long while to get to the heart of the matter which are the children in the facility... that messed up the film for me.I agree that Oliver Reed was a very nice looking man and he did played the role of King quite well - he was really the highlight of the entire movie.6/10

The middle-aged American Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) sails in his boat to Weymouth and stumbles with the twenty year-old Joan (Shirley Anne Field) on the street. He believes that she is a prostitute but she is actually part of a scheme of a motorcycle gang to rob tourists. Simon is brutally beaten up by her brother King (Oliver Reed) and his gang. The policemen find the wounded Simon and take him to a bar to recover, where he meets the military Bernard (Alexander Knox) and his mistress Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors). On the next morning, Joan challenges King and meets Simon in his boat, and King and his gang hunts Simon down. Joan and Simon spend the night together in an isolated house and on the morning, they are located by the gang. They try to flee and stumble in a top-secret military facility managed by Bernard. They are helped by children and brought to their hideout in a cave. King falls in the sea while chasing the couple and is also helped by a boy and brought to the same place. Soon Joan finds that the children are cold as if they were dead. What is the secret of the children and the military staff?"The Damned" is a creepy sci-fi with a very dark and hopeless conclusion in the summit of the Cold War. In this period, people were paranoid with nuclear attack and the British research in understood by those that lived in that period. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Malditos" ("Damned")

Following his divorce, retired American insurance executive MacDonald Carey (as Simon Wells) goes on a holiday boating trip along the rocky coast of Weymouth, England. On the promenade, he sees sexually arousing Shirley Anne Field (as Joan) saunter by with come hither hips. They quickly decide to copulate, but she turns out to be part of a plot to beat-up and rob the middle-aged Mr. Carey. Having second thoughts, Ms. Field decides to leave the black leather motorcycle gang led by darkly handsome brother Oliver Reed (as King) and hops on Carey's boat. They run away from Mr. Reed and hide in a cliff-side bungalow. Passionately possessive of his wayward sister, Reed follows the couple in hot pursuit. The trio finally meet-up in a hidden cave which houses nine 11-year-old children. Their guardian is dictator-like Alexander Knox (as Bernard), who is seeing attractive sculptress Viveca Lindfors (as Freya Neilson)...The young children have a horrifying secret...There appear to be two disconnected story lines, here. The first resembles a 1950s juvenile delinquent film, which might be described as age versus rebellious youth. This is layered with, and eventually replaced by, an apocalyptic science fiction film. Both have subplots. Directed with some flair by Joseph Losey, "The Damned" would have been better if more connections were made. The vague ones are intriguing. The children wonder how nine of them are going to copulate; they are an uneven number. The main adult players also form an uneven number, with incest playing a part. The girl Rachel Clay (as Victoria) assumes a leadership role among the young children. The boy Kit Williams (as Henry) obviously parallels the delinquent Reed. With stronger threading, the whole picture could have been weaved into something much more worthwhile. James Bernard's music, especially the "Black Leather Rock" theme, is very catchy.****** The Damned (5/19/63) Joseph Losey ~ MacDonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, Alexander Knox

The seaside resort of Weymouth is the unlikely setting for this 1963 Joseph Losey film. It also happens to be the home of a biker gang who act tough by strutting around town in black leather jackets and… whistling. The leader of the gang (Oliver Reed) is unhealthily protective of his sister's chastity (Shirley Anne Field), though he's not above using her to lure men into honey traps. She, in turn, gets involved with an American yachtsman (McDonald Carey), much to her brother's rage. Meanwhile, there's a parallel scenario involving an eccentric sculptress (Viveca Lindfors) and a mysterious military base on the cliffs where a group of children are held captive in a secret bunker, a lair not too dissimilar to the one Kubrick used in Dr Strangelove a year later. The two narratives merge when the quarrelling trio from the first scenario invade the base via a secret entrance and discover that the abducted kids harbour a terrible secret; one that involves a dead rabbit, the black death and their permanently freezing temperatures.Losey's direction gives the film a lot of credibility while Hammer regular DOP Arthur Grant makes everything look shadowy and sinister. The big let-down is the script, especially the embarrassing incidental dialogue. The 'dammed' of the title and the presence of the children suggest the work of John Wyndham, however, the story is based on the novel Children of the Light by H L Lawrence. Rumour has it that Losey completely rewrote the script (unaccredited) in his determination to make a 'moral' statement following his Hollywood blacklisting. This is very strange if true, for the core narrative is so entertainingly mad that it's hard to see where any such statement would make an impact. A moral maze this film isn't. The recent anamorphic transfer features the uncut version of the film, In the original print the US distributors snipped out some of the social comment, unwittingly providing an example of the prevailing paranoia of the period.