Village of the Damned is Carpenter’s second remake. This one is not quite as inventive as the Thing. Here, Carpenter sticks much closer to the source material. The film begins in an idyllic small California town where there is a community barbecue. In the midst of the festivities, the entire town falls unconscious. The government enters the scene very quickly to assess the situation. They find there is a line that can be crossed, where a person will pass out. Almost as quickly as it hit, the town wakes up.
Soon, six women discover they are pregnant. The babies are all born at the same time (but one is stillborn), and the government leaves behind researches to keep an eye on the newborns. As the years progress the five children are becoming quite peculiar and are surrounded by mysterious tragedies. The children all have silvery hair (the actors are quite annoyed that people think they wore wigs. They did not) and are immensely smart. They are eventually kept away from other children and taught by Christopher Reeve (in his last role before being paralyzed). Reeve’s Alan Chaffee knows there is a problem brewing and starts trying to find ways to block the children’s psychic powers. He also starts to connect with the young David, who seems to have more empathy than the other children. This is, in part, due to the stillborn having been meant to be his partner.
Really, the visuals of the film are striking. The five children with shocking silver hair and the subtle visual effects (primarily in their eyes and faces, the more intensely they focus, the more their alien physiology becomes dominant).
The performances are all dependable for the needs of the film. Reeve makes good use of his decent guy reputation and Kirstie Alley is good in the role of cold and calculating government liaison Dr. Susan Verner. But really? the standouts are Thomas Dekker as David and Lindsey Haun as Mara. Haun is chilling and full of menace, while Dekker’s growing humanity makes him truly sympathetic in his loneliness.
While not as unique as his previous remake, the Village of the Damned is a nicely done horror film that pays homage to more classic horror.
Superman III bombed heavily. Eventually, the rights were sold to Canon Films. Reeve had sworn off ever playing Superman again. But four years later he was back. In part, he was promised that he could be involved with the story. And the story we got was Superman getting rid of all our nuclear weapons. He puts them in a net and hurls them into the son. Gene Hackman is back as Lex Luthor…he gets busted out of prison by his dope of a nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer, looking like he stepped on the set of Hiding Out). His plan is to take advantage of Superman’s plan by using Superman’s DNA (from a strand of Superman’s hair) and get it in with the missiles. He succeeds and creates the weirdest enemy for Superman the screen has seen.
Superman three came three years after Superman II, riding high on it’s success, but behind the scenes things looked bleak. There was a divide between some of the cast and the Salkinds over how they had treated Richard Donner. Kidder was not really feeling up to participating. To address this, Perry sends her off to the tropics, while sending Clark to do a story in Smallville at his High School Reunion.
Assemble almost 30 years later, the Donner cut restores the original footage Donner shot and also uses some of the Lester material to fill in the blanks. It was not assembled by Donner, but it had his blessing.
Superman the Movie and Superman II were filmed back to back, but director Richard Lester came in when there was friction between the Salkinds and Donner. He threw out a lot of what Donner filmed and started over. Remember Zod and his Cronies? They are still floating through space in the Phantom Zone. When Superman thwarts a terrorist plot by launching a bomb into space, they are set free and make their way to earth.
Richard Donner’s Superman is often presented as a more upbeat and hopeful film than more recent Superhero efforts. And, in a lot of ways, it is a brighter view overall. Donner opens the film with life on Krypton. His version of Krypton has influenced countless versions of Superman. It became a ruling vision. And I get it…it is a society and world at it’s end. But the severely antiseptic frozen tundra look is actually unpleasant and does not really speak of an advanced society. Jor-El is introduced presiding over the trial of General Zod and his army. Well, him, Ursa and Non. Not really an army. What stands out was that in the middle of this trial, Zod tries to convince Jor-El to join him. And then they are zapped by a giant reflective record sleeve. Then, they never appear in the rest of the film.
Tripping Through Gateways 