Hammer sci-fi drama is something of a Village of the Damned knock-off that takes awhile to get going. First half is devoted to drama of American Macdonald Carey romancing British Shirley Anne Field, who is the sister of a biker gang leader (Oliver Reed). This is all fairly tedious with only a hint or two of the sci-fi elements coming later in the film. So make sure you sit with it through all this. Also be prepared for a very annoying song to get stuck in your head. "Black leather black leather smash smash smash" repeats over and over. Anyway, Carey and Field go to a clifftop house to get away from her psycho brother. But Reed and gang show up and chase them. The two eventually find themselves among a group of weird children who are part of some kind of government experiment. It's here where the movie gets interesting.Macdonald Carey always seemed like a weak leading man to me and I'm not surprised his movie career never took off. He would find his biggest success on TV soap opera Days of Our Lives for decades. Oliver Reed is fine, though his biker gang seems a somewhat laughable threat today. Shirley Anne Field is alright for a rather flimsy part. Veteran actor Alexander Knox brings some class to the film. Viveca Lindfors offers a strange performance where she seems oddly flirtatious with every male she shares a scene with, though nothing ever really comes of this. I don't even think it was part of the script. It just seemed to be something Lindfors threw in there. A decent drama with sci-fi themes and a powerful ending. Worth a look but requires effort.

This Amalgamation of a Movie is Memorable for so Many Things. It is Atmospheric and Unsettling, Disjointed and Alarming, Incohesive and Interesting, Profound and Disturbing. In Fact, in America it was Deemed Controversial after the Cuban Missile Crisis and so much so that its Release was not only Delayed but Edited and Dumped Years Later and Plunked to be Forgotten on the Bottom of a Hammer Double Bill.Watching it Today, it is a Cold War Message Piece involving Radioactive Children Reared in Laboratories like so many Rats. They are at once more Endearing and Sympathetic than Anyone on Screen.The Opening Teddy Boy Juvenile Crime Sequence, at First Showing the "Evil" Street Thugs with an Incestuous Leader of the Villains is a Striking Contrast to the Real Evil in the Movie that is Radiation, Scientific Indifference, and Government Secrets.It is a Cold and Unforgettable Film that at First Glance seems Clunky, Confusing, and a Hopeless Mess, is Afterwards Ingrained in the Consciousness and what Remains is a Chilling Experience and its Message, just like the Movie, is One for the Ages.

That the very mention of the word 'Hammer' brings to mind the Gothic settings, garish colours and tightly corseted maidens of British horror films of the 1950s and 1960s might explain why Joseph Losey's The Damned is something of an oddity. That Hammer is often seen as British cinema's only viable claim to an indigenous phenomenon gives a further indication, because The Damned is transnational; directed by an American filmmaker, with an American distributor (Columbia) and, it could be argued, rife with American themes - specifically the connection of rock n' roll culture to violence and the threat of atomic science on mankind. The setting here is not a fog filled stage set masquerading as period London or Eastern Europe but a post-war seaside town (Weymouth) terrorised by a gang of recalcitrant teddy- boys led by Oliver Reed's menacing hoodlum. The scientists are not camp, eccentric, wild- eyed mad men creating monsters and surrogate families in outrageous laboratories using vague and nonsensical science but are government men experimenting on children with atomic power. The solid and steady British directors employed by Hammer make way for an American 'auteur' who, stigmatised by the House Un-American Activities Committee, had been forced to move to Britain and adopt a pseudonym. Instead of Cushing and Lee doing battle as literary man-and-monster we have a dandy and violent youth in a tweed jacket fighting patriarchal threats and his own repression, while the victims here are not the aforementioned tightly corseted maidens at the mercy of a lustful monster but a group of precocious, emotionally starved children living in a bunker. Finally, the good-defeats-evil ending seen in Hammer's more popular stock has here been subverted to something far more bleak and nihilistic in keeping with the zeitgeist (though it should be pointed out that by the time The Damned was finally released, such concerns had to some degree become nugatory.) That The Damned recapitulates concerns of the 1950s and 1960s at all is down to Losey's political astuteness and penchant for social commentary. Cold War paranoia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, clandestine governments experimenting with nuclear power and disaffected youth are all touched on here just as Losey had touched on the increasingly diffuse class system of the 1960s in The Servant (1963) and capital punishment in Time Without Pity (1957). While in his first British film, The Sleeping Tiger (1954), a young thug is experimented on by a psychiatrist who attempts to 'cure' him of his violent ways; a progenitor of sorts to A Clockwork Orange's Alex. Troubled youth is encapsulated in one line in particular as one of the military men barks to young gang member Ted "Your sort don't have any rights," reflecting the stifling patriarchal rule and lack of freedom of the 1950s and early 1960s that would give rise to the angry- young-men of the same period, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Hammer were keen to make a more contemporary film grounded in realism at this time. Violent, youthful rebellion is the first thing the camera shows us where The Damned begins in Losey's typical style of exposition (sound and action with no dialogue) as the teddy boys orchestrate with military precision the mugging and gang-beating of Simon Wells, a middle-aged American tourist, by using a honey-trap in the form of gang leader King's sensual but subjugated sister, Joanie. Recovering in a hotel lobby a battered and bruised Simon prophetically remarks that he did not expect such senseless and asinine violence to be present England; an issue that should resonate today with socially conscious audiences and those with an interest in the 'hoodie-horror' sub-genre.

This movie is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand its a quite maintaining and also original movie within its genre but on the other its also a quite messy one, that screams wasted potential.Seriously, in the hands of a more capable director and with some more money behind it, this movie could had been such a fascinating and classic one within its genre. Lots of the right ingredients are there but they are however often wasted by its messy way of storytelling.This really is the biggest problem of the movie. For about 80% of its running time, I had absolutely no idea what was happening. It's because the 'mystery' of the movie gets revealed and explained really late on into the movie and before that, the movie is filled with lots of moments that in the long run have absolutely nothing to do with the story at all. Same goes for some of the character really. It makes the movie at times really messy and unnecessarily confusing to watch. It takes away lots of the pleasure from watching this movie but even worse is that it kills off lots of the potential that this movie showed with its concept.The movie is being the type of science-fiction thriller that became mostly popular later in the '70's. It's a story that tries to pick a more realistic approach to things, as if in nothing that gets featured in this movie couldn't potentially happen in real life as well. I honestly like these sort of movies but this movie just really isn't the best example of the genre its possibilities and its great and most fascinating aspects.It could had all worked out much better within this movie if it had only been more tense and mysterious. The movie now is only mysterious in the sense of not ever really explaining anything, until the end. But this just doesn't really work out well for the movie. The tension and mystery of the movie just often falls flat, which perhaps is also being somewhat due to the fact that the movie doesn't really have strong or likable characters in it. The only really good character in this movie is played by Oliver Reed but he's being somewhat of a villain, so not one of the main 'heroes' or leading characters.But still, the movie remains a mostly good watch. This is mostly due to its concept, that is being still original, despite the fact that it doesn't get exploited and used to its full potential. Nevertheless, the movie remains a good 'different' watch and I think that the lovers of science-fiction thrillers shall still most likely enjoy this movie, just like I, despite everything, still did.Just don't expect, just because the Hammer studios name is attached to this, that this movie is going to be a tense, atmospheric one. The atmosphere and setting have basically nothing in common with the typical and distinctive Hammer studios atmosphere or style of film-making. In a way this movie is being much more like Hammer's earlier production, such as all of the 'Quatermass' movies.Just give it a shot. Chances are you might end up liking it, despite all of its flaws and all of its obvious wasted potential. It's still an interesting and honestly also, good watch.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/