Apathy and the Apocalypse

Joseph Losey was a left-leaning American film director who was blacklisted (supposedly at the behest of Howard Hughes, after he refused to make a film called I Married A Communist), and ended up working in Europe and especially the UK, where he eventually formed a long-lasting and productive relationship with Harold Pinter. His best-remembered films include The Servant and The Go-Between.

Not quite the usual sort of person you’d expect to find directing for Hammer Films, but then the movie he ended up doing isn’t your usual sort of Hammer film. It is The Damned (known in some quarters as These Are The Damned), filmed in 1961 but not released until a couple of years later.

As the film gets underway there is a strange tension between its Hammer and non-Hammer elements – there is a James Bernard score, instantly recognisable as such even though it seems to be in a minor key, but playing over images of rather odd sculptures (courtesy of Elizabeth Frink, who was present for part of the shoot) on a coastal clifftop rather than castles or mountains. And then The Damned seems on the verge of turning into Quadrophenia or Beat Girl, as we find ourselves in the  seaside town of Weymouth in the middle of tourist season, with a very John Barry-ish song called ‘Black Leather’ playing on the soundtrack. A young woman named Joan (Shirley Anne Field) finds her wiles attracting a much older man (B-movie stalwart Macdonald Carey, not that long before he started his three-decade residency on The Days of Our Lives); his name is Simon. However, Joan and Simon walking off together seems to attract the ire of a scooter gang, who proceed to beat him up, seemingly just for kicks. Giving it the beans  in terms of brooding saturnine intensity is Oliver Reed as the gang leader, King (not quite Reed’s first role for Hammer, but a step up); fairly prominent amongst his minions is a young Kenneth Cope.

Simon’s path crosses that of a sculptress, Freya (Viveca Lindfors), who will be living in the area courtesy of her own acquaintance, Bernard (Alexander Knox), a scientist in charge of a hush-hush government project in the area. To be honest this is just a contrivance to bring together two plot strands which would otherwise remain separate for most of the film, but it’s an acceptable one.

Anyway, Joan decides she really does like the look of Simon (one wonders why – he has his own cabin cruiser, but that’s about all) and the two of them run off together, pursued by King and his goons. They eventually make landfall near Freya’s cottage, where they are spotted by one of the bikers and a chase ensues. While trying to climb down the cliffs, they both fall into the sea, followed not long after by King himself.

They recover to find themselves in a cave under the cliffs, being looked after by a group of young children who are all 11 years old. We have already seen that the education of these children – by TV screen – is a central element of Bernard’s project. But who are they? Why is their skin so icy to the touch? And why is Bernard so determined to keep them isolated, seemingly at any cost?

In short, the film seamlessly shifts from looking like a teenage exploitation movie to something more akin to Quatermass or Village of the Damned, although it has a hard edge to it which is totally lacking from Hammer’s costume pictures of this period: the gang violence and ruthless scientific experimentation on young people seems to anticipate A Clockwork Orange, in some ways, too. The film was X-rated in 1963; these days it’s more like a 12, but that doesn’t quite tell the whole story.

I’ve been watching Hammer films for 35 years or so; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Usually they’re very entertaining, one way or another; occasionally shocking; seldom what you’d actually call scary. But The Damned is horrible in a way that no other Hammer horror film matches – not horrible in that it’s badly made (far from it), but horrible in its conception, in its absolute bleakness and nihilism. It finds real-world fear-buttons that velvet-wrapped gothic fantasies never get close to.

The children in the bunker under the cliff are the mutated products of a nuclear accident, and being studied and educated by Bernard and his men. Uniquely in the world, they are completely immune to radiation – in fact, their bodies generate it quite naturally, at levels which are eventually lethal to normal people. Simon and Joan are initially unaware of this, and are shocked to discover them being apparently held prisoner. But Knox has his eye on the bigger picture: he is secure in his absolute certainty that a nuclear holocaust is inevitable, and he is preparing the children for the day when civilisation is destroyed and they inherit an irradiated world in which only they can survive. This idea is put across in a chillingly matter-of-fact way and with complete conviction. It’s not just the situation, but the abandonment of any hope implicit in it – total acceptance and apathy in the face of a looming armageddon.

Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it, in fact, and what actually happens in the third act of the film only compounds it: already feeling the onset of radiation sickness from contact with the children, Simon and the others attempt to help them escape, only for Bernard to send in troops in radiation suits and helicopters to recapture them all. Simon and Joan are allowed to go free, as Bernard already knows they won’t get the chance to tell their story; other witnesses are also ruthlessly eliminated. Bernard reflects that the main regrettable consequence of the whole affair is that the children now know they are bing kept as prisoners. Simon’s yacht, with him and Joan aboard, begins to drift aimlessly; the holidaymakers at Weymouth go about their fun, oblivious to the plaintive cries of the imprisoned children in their subterranean world; the film ends.

Some elements of The Damned have not aged well, particularly the supporting performances and parts of the script (the scenes between Joan and Simon, for example). But the core of the film still has a tremendous power even today – it hits, appropriately enough, like a hammer. These days we may not be quite so conscious of the shadow of the bomb hanging over us, but that shadow still exists; there are enough terrible things we seem happy to put out of sight and out of mind. This is not a comforting film, or a particularly easy one to watch, but it’s still one of the most striking and effective Hammer productions I’ve ever come across, atypical though it clearly is.