If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

For decades we have been living with the cult of the director, but in Hollywood they will tell you only two things really matter on a picture: the screenplay and the casting. Get those two things right and any competent director can make a good movie. Get them wrong and a great director might make the movie watchable but he can't make it good.After watching The Damned, who can doubt that Hollywood is right and movie critics are wrong? Joseph Losey was a very good director, but this movie scarcely rises to the level of the watchable.The casting is desperate. McDonald Carey was 47 (and looks older) so his wooing of Shirley Anne Field was just creepy.She in turn was a tad too old to be playing a teenager. Her acting at that time was famously a bad joke. In the Damned she doesn't actually fluff her lines, but that is about it. Her accent is all over the place.Oliver Reed is a personal aversion of mine. In his early days, he always gave the same intense, brooding performance irrespective of the character or the tone of the picture. His acting was pure narcissism: second division Marlon Brando.Kenneth Cope was nearing thirty but looked younger so often got saddled with teenage roles like this. As a nihilistic thug, starting to have doubts about his life, he is laughable.Viveca Lindfors was a decent actress but has nothing to work with. What was her character doing in this picture?The kids couldn't act.The screenplay is a mess. It was cobbled together in two weeks when Losey rejected the script he had been given. It is no surprise that nothing hangs together and nothing connects properly.The premise is ridiculous. Breeding kids who are naturally radio-active in order that they could survive after a nuclear war gives a whole new meaning to 'playing the long game'. That they could also be cold-blooded is scientific nonsense and an insult to any audience that could be expected to take this film seriously. If you want to say something about Cold War hysteria, you should at least try to make it faintly plausible and pertinent.Clearly there is an attempt to draw a parallel between the casual violence of the gang and the purposive violence of the bureaucrats, but this is compromised by the 'softly softly' approach of the military to the breach of security at the research complex. The authorities seem to be behaving with commendable restraint, so the execution of the artist by Bernard is totally discordant with anything seen before.The gang are constantly called Teddy Boys, a phenomenon of the early Fifties, although they are clearly 'Rockers' or 'Greasers'. However, this is not necessarily and error on Losey's part. It is plausible that middle-aged men would not be abreast of the fine distinctions of youth culture and would use an anachronistic term.Other reviewers have noted some parallels with A Clockwork Orange but this must have been purely accidental. The film could not have been drawing on the book for inspiration since it had not yet been published. Similarly, I very much doubt if Anthony Burgess ever saw the movie, much less was influenced by it.I am tempted to say that any film by Joseph Losey is of some interest, but The Damned tests that proposition almost to destruction. This must be close to Losey's low point as a film maker.

Older Yank Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) is vacationing on the south coast of England. He is lured by the lovely 20 year old Joan (Shirley Anne Field) into a mugging by her brother King (Oliver Reed) and his gang of black leather clad bikers. Wells is badly beaten. Meanwhile there is a top secret mysterious military plan going on. There is a group of nine children hidden away living in isolation. Wells takes to his boat. Joan jumps on board after getting tired of her domineering brother. They return to shore to find an empty cliff top house. They are chased by King and his gang to a military base. They escape with the kids' help to their underground hideout. Then the kids rescue King as well.It takes way too long to get to the heart of the movie. The first part almost feels like a fake out on the audience. I don't really understand the need to take that long to set up the characters. It is excruciating to sit through. It picks up a little when the kids get on the screen. At least the mystery of the kids is interesting. It helps to keep the last half of the movie watchable. However that's all that could said about this movie.

The Damned (AKA: These Are The Damned) is directed by Joseph Losey and adapted to screenplay by Evan Jones from the novel The Children of Light written by H.L. Lawrence. It stars Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, Alexander Knox, Viveca Lindfors and Walter Gotell. Music is by James Bernard and cinematography by Arthur Grant.The South Coast of England, and a middle aged American tourist, a Teddy Boy gang leader and his troubled sister are thrust together into a deadly scenario deep below the cliffs of Weymouth...Blacklisted by Hollywood, Joseph Losey moved to Britain to continue his artistic leanings. 1963 saw the release of two Losey movies, the much lauded The Servant and also The Damned, the latter of which was finished in 1961 but held back for reasons that are not exactly clear. As it transpires, The Damned is something of an under seen gem, a unique picture that defies genre classification, one of Hammer Films' oddest productions but all the more brilliant for it.From the off it should be stated that this is not a film for those wishing to be cheered up, from a brutal mugging at the start to a finale that will haunt your dreams, pessimism and bleakness pervades the narrative. This is in the vein of The Quatermass series of films, tinged with a touch of John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos, yet for the fist part of the film there's no clue as to where the narrative will take you. The back drop is a sunny and vibrant seaside town (Weymouth one of my favourite British resorts), an irritatingly catchy tune (Black Leather Rock) is being sung as we follow the meeting of the principal characters. From here you think this is a film about teenage angst, a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club themed picture, where the perils of gang youth is born and the divide between the young and the old is caustically dissected. Yet this is not the case at all, this is merely a cataclysmic meeting of integrity and troubled souls that's going somewhere terribly sad, the vagaries of fate dealing its deadly hand.Losey then instills the picture with potent characterisations and striking imagery as we head towards what will be a fascinating and clinically cruel last third of the film. The brother and sister relationship between King and Joan is drip fed with smart dialogue, we don't need it spelled out, but we know that from King's side of things it's badly unhealthy. In the middle is Simon, trying to build a relationship with Joan under trying circumstances. At first it's hard to accept a "clearly too old" Simon as a romantic partner for a sultry Joan, but as back stories are dangled it's not inconceivable that Joan would seek solace in the arms of an older man.The Children of Light.On the outer edges, for a while, are Bernard (Knox) and Freya (Lindfors), he's a scientist, she's a sculptress, they themselves are part of a weird relationship. He's mysterious and soon to become the focal point of a terrible secret, she's eccentric and spends her time at her cliff top studio crafting weird sculptures, the latter of which Losey gleefully enjoys framing to keep the atmosphere edgy, the images are lasting and used to great impact as The Damned reveals its hand, and what a hand it is. Enter the science fiction, enter the government and their shifty dalliances, enter the children, the children of light...It's a socko final third of cinema, both narratively and in viewing Losey's skill at creating striking compositions (while he garners impressive performances from his cast as well, especially Lindfors). It becomes thrilling yet deeply profound as it spins towards its bleak finale. It can be argued that its core sentiment (message) is heavily handled, and that Carey is a touch unsuitable as an all action hero type, but the film rises above these minor issues. For once the camera pulls away from the cliffs to reveal a swanky seaside town, the cries of children still ringing in our ears, you know you have watched something pretty special. 9/10One of Hammer's unsung classics, The Damned can be found on The Icons of Suspense Hammer Collection. Region 1, it appears with five other films, two of which - Cash On Demand/Never Take Sweets from A Stranger - are also little gems waiting to be discovered. Great transfers for viewing pleasure, I can't recommend this collection highly enough.

"These Are The Damned" is a very difficult film to watch. In some ways, it is fascinating...but the fascination is often lost because the plot is so unnecessarily complicated and confused. It's a shame, because if the film had cut out most of the first 30 minutes, it would have been a lot better.The film begins with a plot that has NOTHING to do with the later portion of the movie. The American actor, Macdonald Carey, owns a boat and lands in London. There, he's beaten up by a gang led by the freaky Oliver Reed. I say freaky because there's a kinky undercurrent of incest between himself and his lovely sister--and yet this, like the Carey portion of the story, is never capitalized upon and the film is confused in its focus. Eventually, the sister and Carey run off and are pursued by Reed and his gang. But then, the film does a complete turnabout--as the pair are rescued by a group of radioactive mutant children living in a weird British government lab!!! Believe it or not, it's like two completely different films are just tossed together--and both major stories get short-changed in the process. I wanted to see more about Reed's kinky relationship or the new relationship between the sister and Carey--but what about the paranoid radioactive mutant story?!?! The bottom line is that the film has a lot of interesting portions but the whole is a mess. In addition, a few little things in the film are sloppy--such as the SUPER-annoying "Black Leather" song and the angle outside window at 25 minutes that is completely impossible and poorly integrated. An interesting failure.