Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie Review

"Without feelings, you're nothing. You're just second-rate mimics of a higher organism."

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson October 10, 2016

After they made In the Mouth of Madness (1995), John Carpenter and his producer/wife Sandy King Carpenter went to Universal Pictures with hopes of launching a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Universal made a quid pro quo with the Carpenters that if they would do a color remake of Village of the Damned, the studio would then let them make CFTBL. (The latter has never materialized.) The Carpenters acquiesced and with a script by David Himmelstein already written, the filmmakers went ahead with casting the picture. The producers chose Christopher Reeve to step into the shoes first occupied by George Saunders as the country doctor in the original Village of the Damned (1960). Kirstie Alley was cast against type to portray the key supporting role of Dr. Susan Verner, an epidemiologist from the National Science Foundation. It was also atypical of Linda Kozlowski to take on a more serious part as Jill McGowan, a determined woman who assumes greater importance in the film's third act.

John Carpenter remains largely faithful to Wolf Rilla's original film and its screenplay adaptation of John Wyndham's novel, The Midwich Cuckoos. Carpenter keeps the provincial English town of Midwich intact, although he shot the film across parts of California and in New Mexico. (Notice the California license plates in the film.) Unlike Rilla's version, Carpenter spends extra minutes in the beginning establishing the characters and settings before a phenomena strikes Midwich that is not unlike the eponymous moment in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Women of various ages, including virgins, have somehow have become impregnated after Midwich returns to a state of normalcy. Carpenter and co-composer Dave Davies's beautiful and haunting score perfectly suits the opening credits' images of a salmon-colored sky and overcast clouds. Ghostly voices are heard over the sound track as the swooping aerial shots suggest that some alternative species may descend from the skies onto Midwich. Indeed, when the fate of Dr. Alan Chaffee's (Chris Reeve) wife, Barbara (Karen Kahn), is sealed, Carpenter brilliantly uses the full spectrum of the 2.35:1 ratio by superimposing the head of the Chafees' daughter, Mara, over a bleak cloud. The babies that the Midwich women give birth to develop motor skills rapidly and have unusually high IQs. The albino kids form their own clique and are quickly looked at with indifference by most of the township's residents.

Be careful not to stare into their eyes too long!

The headstrong Mara (Lindsey Haun) is the leader of the pack and makes demands to her father and other figures of authority about how the community should accommodate the wishes of her brethren of young alien children. This marks a significant change from the original where David (Martin Stephens) is the evil principal who takes over the group. In Carpenter's version, David (Thomas Dekker) is Jill's son and he differentiates himself from the others because he possesses feelings and emotions. (The 1960 film had a chance to go that route after David discovered blood on his fingertip.) Making David the outcast saves Carpenter's film from becoming too monotonous because his deviations in behavior discriminate him from the homogenous batch that he purportedly should follow. This is not to suggest that Dekker's performance (which is good) is plainly superior to Martin Stephens's interpretation of David in the original but it throws a wildcard into the mix and makes the narrative's direction more unpredictable.

Susan is the scientific voice of reason for the extraordinary happenings brought to Midwich and the script gives her some witty lines to explain her theories, which are on the technical side. (Alley delivers a surprisingly good dramatic performance.) The late Reeve is stout and likeable as Alan Chaffee but his performance is not as three-dimensional as Saunders's Gordon Zellaby is in the original. The relationship between Gordon and the children is better developed and more ambiguous than the one Alan forges with the white-haired kids. There seems to be a kind of "intimate trust" built between Gordon and his son, David, as well as the other children in Rilla's version. In the remake, Mara isn't really looked at as even Alan and Barbara's accidental daughter. She is a pupil that Alan tries to understand better but their familial relationship is unexplored.

Village of the Damned (1995) was not well-received at the time and disappeared from U.S. theaters after its first three weeks. One theory is that while the Cold War had only officially come to an end a few years prior to VOTD's release, its politics had already receded in the audience's collective memory. For example, the initial explanation for Midwich's citizenry passing out unconsciously is possibly due to a virus outbreak or the spread of chemical weapons. Neither probably resonated or connected with contemporary viewers. In addition, the prospect of a progeny of child aliens landing on earth from outer-space and later commandeering an entire village made for a unrealistic premise that was difficult to accept. The children's dehumanized posture resembling young communists and their marches in unison down the street recalling Hitler's youth make them out to be anachronistic villains. Readers may be surprised at the high rating given to the film. Carpenter captures the spirit of the original film while remaining true to his cinematic vision. While VOTD did not have a large budget, Carpenter had more resources at his disposal compared to his indie films. Industrial Light and Magic's effects work for the children's glowing eyes is dazzling, although viewers seeking more subtlety will find it overwrought. (Keep in mind that Rilla used a similar technique in his own version.) Some of the actors on the disc's making-of doc bemoan that at least three scenes that Carpenter shot are left out in the theatrical cut, with one actor claiming that one-third of the director's original cut is missing. Carpenter recently stated that he is proud of the film and doesn't mention any studio interference in a new interview. It would be nice to see the deleted scenes in full or have them put back into an earlier cut. (Himmelstein reportedly wrote a 110-page screenplay.) Still, Carpenter's VOTD is over twenty minutes longer than Rilla's with the American remake attempting to flesh out details that were not extrapolated in its British predecessor. This is not imply that quantity triumphs over quality. The 1960 horror chiller is a well-regarded classic and the finer of the two pictures. The point is that the modern VOTD reveals Carpenter's professional craftsmanship for making a respectable and polished horror film within Hollywood's studio system.

Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Village of the Damned makes it U.S. debut courtesy of Shout! Factory on this AVC-encoded BD-50 with a slipcover featuring new cover artwork by Nathan Milliner. The reversible sleeve sports the original theatrical poster. The film is presented in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio of the original 35mm anamorphic theatrical prints. Viewers will immediately notice that during the opening five-minute, twenty-one-second montage of main titles, the image is pillarboxed. (See Screenshot #s 6 and 7.) The only plausible explanation for the placement of slim black borders along the left and right sides is for the text to extend out to the outer edges. During the credits sequence, the names and/or roles of the cast and crew alternate from the left, middle, and right sides. Since there isn't any text near the image's periphery, this display effect seems unnecessary. A cursory glance at VOTD's video history indicates that the DVDs and Blu-rays have never got the transfer quite right. Following its letterboxed transfer of Carpenter's movie on LaserDisc in the mid-nineties, Universal released a standard DVD edition that is virtually identical for Regions coded 1, 2, and 4. According to Dean McIntosh of Michael D's Region 4 DVD Info Page, the picture quality appeared "razor sharp from start to finish, although it may be a little too sharp for its own good." In 2009, Universal re-released VOTD with a different transfer as part of the studio's John Carpenter: Master of Fear - 4 Film Collection. DVD Talk's Tyler Foster observed that it looked the worst of the four titles in the set "with a picture that is occasionally so soft and fuzzy that I almost wonder if it was sourced from some sort of analog tape...the insistent fuzziness basically plagues the entire film. Colors also seem a tad muted." I first saw VOTD on a digital stream in 2010 and recall the washed-out colors and lack of clarity that were also apparently prevalent on Universal's second release.

Prior to VOTD's American premiere in high-definition, the film had already been released on Blu-ray in Germany by Koch Entertainment and in the UK by Fabulous Films. Both editions presumably source the same master Universal used on its inaugural DVD. To mask the aliasing present on that disc, Koch and F.F. have applied edge enhancement. Faces generally appear pale and waxed. Shout! has also licensed the same transfer from Universal that the two European labels put on their discs. Shout!'s video bitrate totals 35000 kbps compared to F.F.'s 27999 kbps but the UK Blu-ray has superior authoring and compression. This is primarily due to F.F.'s sole inclusion of a trailer while Shout! packs over 140 minutes of bonus material on the disc's second layer. (Koch, which also only includes a trailer, has even better encoding with an average video bitrate of 34.47 Mbps.) The DNR and EE is also omnipresent on Shout!'s transfer. One needs to squint at the interior white walls to discern vestiges of film grain. Hence, a great majority of grain has been removed. The picture does have its positive virtues, though, with rich and warm colors shining particularly during the outdoor daylight scenes. The image looks very clean with no source flaws or digital artifacts popping up. Shout! has divided the film up into twelve chapter stops. (Universal's discs had three times as many scene selections.) Usually, I would dock a disc's video score by a half or full star due to noise removal and oversharpening tools. However, because this is the best VOTD has looked (and is unlikely to receive better treatment in the near future), I have slightly inflated the video rating. My score is 3.25.

Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Village of the Damned was one of cinema's early DTS features and Shout! has supplied two audio options: a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix and a standard DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track. The label has encoded the 5.1 at a whopping 4246 kbps (24-bit), easily surpassing F.F.'s 2259 kbps audio bitrate, which only uses a bit depth of 16. Carpenter and Davies's score is given a thumping recording with the louder beats reverberating from the surround channels and subwoofer. The track demonstrates excellent background depth and range. Dialog is mainly clear and coherent. Shout! has provided optional English SDH.

Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• It Takes a Village: The Making of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED Featuring Interviews with Director John Carpenter, Producer Sandy King, Actors Michael Paré, Peter Jason, Karen Kahn, Meredith Salenger, Thomas Dekker, Cody Dorkin, Lindsey Haun, Danielle Wiener-Keaton and Make-up Effects Artist Greg Nicotero (49:18, 1080p) - a new documentary on the making of the film featuring interviews with eleven cast and crew members. Shout! asked Carpenter if he wanted to record either a commentary or conduct a new interview about the film and he chose the latter. The participants' comments are intercut with clips from the film along with VHS footage of a deleted scene. This is a well-balanced account of how the film came together. Dekker defends Carpenter's contributions on the film and is the most vociferous of all his castmates, speaking his mind with passionate conviction. Alley, Hamill, and Kozlowski do not appear here so they were probably not available.

• Horror's Hallowed Grounds – Revisiting the Locations of the Film (20:59, 1080p) - in this continuing series included on Shout!'s vintage horror releases, host Sean Clark takes the viewer to many of the locations in northern California that Carpenter filmed Village of the Damned.

• The Go to Guy: Peter Jason on John Carpenter (45:14, 1080p) - Carpenter's frequent collaborator looks back with nostalgia and guffaws at several of the films he's worked on with the director. Filled with many amusing stories.

• Vintage Interviews Featuring John Carpenter, Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Mark Hamill and Wolf Rilla (Director of the Original VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED) (14:20, 1080p upconvert) - a compilation of brief interview segments with Carpenter, Reeve, Alley, Kozlowski, Hamill, and Rilla that were culled from Universal's original EPK. They are presented full-frame with VHS-like quality.

• Vintage Behind-the-Scenes Footage (10:19, 1080p upconvert) - this B-roll footage immediately follows the collection of older interviews. It shows Carpenter directing the actors in several different scenes.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:00, 1080p) - a 16x9-friendly original studio trailer which appears in decent shape. It is in anamorphic widescreen with a very thin black border around all four sides.

• Behind-the-Scenes Still Gallery (2:00, 1080p) - a compilation of twenty or so production stills, lobby cards, ad slicks, and theatrical poster sheets from Universal's press kit and publicity campaign.

Village of the Damned Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

John Carpenter's Village of the Damned should play better on Blu-ray than it first did in 1995. It has always been one of the filmmaker's underappreciated efforts and lesser known ones, too. Carpenter fans should find a place for it in their collections. Shout! Factory delivers adequate but problematic video along with a dynamic uncompressed audio mix. The extras are extensive and informative but it would have been illuminating to read a PDF of Himmelstein's original screenplay or hear the writer discuss working with Carpenter. Hopefully, this release will inspire Warner Bros. to put Wolf Rilla's original film on Blu-ray and retain Steve Haberman's solid commentary from the DVD. RECOMMENDED with consideration of the caveats I have noted.