Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

These Are the Damned Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 22, 2020

These are the Damned is currently only available in the twenty film Hammer Ultimate Collection.

American Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey), vacationing in England in an effort to course correct his life, meets the lovely Joan (Shirley Anne Field). Sparks fly and the attraction is magnetic, but Joan's overprotective brother King (Oliver Reed), the leader of a notorious bike gang, will have none of it. He insists that the relationship be broken, but Simon and Joan do not heed the warning. Their relationship will inadvertently lead them to discover a secret underground facility where nine children, all radioactive and capable of surviving nuclear fallout, are sheltered, educated via remote, and know nothing about the world outside of their enclosed-space home.

This little-known film twists about after its first act and completely transforms itself from quasi-interesting romance within a family feud frame and into something entirely different by its end. It's quasi-exploitative, quasi-experimental, and certainly exercises it right to be different. Nothing about the movie ever feels right -- it's somehow distant, peculiar -- yet it also feels elegant in its wayward styling and plotting. It's a curiosity if it's anything and well worth watching.

These Are the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mill Creek's Blu-ray presentation of These are the Damned looks quite nice overall. While the picture suffers from some light speckling and some mild compression artifacts rendering backgrounds a little unstable and fluctuating in density, the picture overall boasts a good, clear image. It's pleasantly organic, meaning filmic, holding to a light and natural grain structure. General textures are sharp. Faces are appropriately revealing, showing fine definition to pores, makeup, hair, and other fine, yet critical, elements. Clothes likewise enjoy robust definition, particularly as the image allows audiences to explore the vintage attire. Environments are crisp across a wide range, including shop interiors, street exteriors, beaches, underground caves, and so on and so forth. The grayscale offers good tonal nuance through the limited range, finding appropriate white crispness at one end and solid enough blacks at the other. In the middle is a satisfying range well capable of differentiating elements one from another, including clothes and location specifics. This is a nice-looking picture overall. Imperfect, but rather good in sum.

These Are the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack carries the material well enough but it's not without some drawbacks. Chief amongst the shortcomings is an underlying hiss that's audible through most of the film. It's at least steady in output, most of the time. There are times when it drops or the frequency shifts, which can be distracting to anything from more pronounced sound elements to hushed dialogue; the rest of the track isn't good enough to cover for this flaw. Core sound elements are fine. Dialogue is clear and images perfectly to the center area, so well that most times it sounds like the center channel is engaged. Other drawbacks are, like the audible hiss, fluctuations in spoken word pitch and volume that are subtle but noticeable at a few places. Atmospheric effects are nicely detailed and integrated, such as a sequence at a dock around the 17- and 18-minute marks. More potent effects, like screaming and a boat pulling away at the end of that sequence, can't quite find tight, commanding detail. Music won't fool listeners into believing the instruments are the room but definition is adequate and spacing along the front fair. There's nothing to be excited about with this one, but neither is there much room for serious critical disappointment. It's a classic case of "it is what it is" and the Blu-ray seems to reproduce the original sound design well enough.

These Are the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As it ships in the Hammer Ultimate Collection, this release of These are the Damned contains no supplemental content.

These Are the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This isn't a hidden gem, but it's certainly an interesting exercise in genre blending and style mashing. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray delivers imperfect but perfectly acceptable video and audio. Worth a look.