YMMV / Village of the Damned (1960)

• Adaptation Displacement: Few people who view the films are aware of the existence of the book The Midwich Cuckoos.
• Fridge Horror: Everybody in a village spontaneously passing out for hours is incredibly dangerous, and we see such things as vehicles crashing, taps left running and things burning as a result. It's mentioned afterward that the event only caused minor injuries (other than the pilot who crashed), but this is sheer luck, as there are many ways people could have died. In the novel, their counterparts weren't so lucky, and many people did die as a result, some from simple exposure.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Given the era, no direct references to sex were allowed, and even references to pregnancy are often circuitous, which becomes tricky when the plot centers around a mass impregnation. Virgin pregnancies are termed as the girls being "unable to account for their condition". A subplot about a married woman who's husband assumes infidelity is presented primarily almost entirely nonverbally.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Gordon killing himself along with the other children is a little sad to think about when you realise that George Sanders, who played Gordon, committed suicide about ten years later. In addition Martin Stephens, who played David, lost his own father three weeks before he filmed this.
• Nightmare Fuel: The children themselves. The young actors did a magnificent job of coming over as utterly alien and inhuman. They are faultlessly polite to everyone, even as they casually make them kill themselves.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • Part of what made the film so terrifying to audiences in 1960 was the fact that Creepy Children had not been seen like this before. The film's aversion of Dawson Casting, featuring actual children doing these horrific things, was shocking to a 1960s audience.
  • The virgin birth plot point was scandalously risque for the time as well. The National Legion of Decency objected to it, as it teetered on the edge of being blasphemous.
• Paranoia Fuel: Two of the impregnated women are virgins, and another had a husband away at sea. Imagine discovering you're pregnant when there's no visible way it could have happened. The audience knows it's probably supernatural, but given the awareness of rape culture these days, it's possible the women feared she'd been taken advantage of while unconscious. One of the girls is only seventeen!
• Tear Jerker: Gordon Zellaby saying farewell to his wife before she drives Allan to London, knowing he will never see her again. Things get even sadder when he says goodbye to his dog shortly afterward.
• The Woobie: The woman called Janet we briefly meet, whose husband was away at sea for a year. He returns to find her pregnant, and assumes she cheated. She's later said to have killed herself over it.

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