The Damned (1963) dir. Joseph Losey, Hammer Film Productions
Moving into the science fiction portion of our Hammer lookback, we see Oliver Reed, rockers, and spooky kids.
Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) is a middle aged American divorcee just wandering around the English countryside. He spots a 20ish chick (Shirley Anne Field) and tries some obviously rusty pickup lines. Turns out that was a mistake, as the young lass was acting as lookout for her brother King (Reed) and his gang of rockers.
The encounter ends badly for Wells, who is dragged into a nearby coffee shop to recover. While there we see Bernard (Alexander Knox). He's somewhat of a regular at the shop but he refuses to say what it is he does for a living. He's friendly with Freya (Viveca Lindfors), an artist who stops by once a year and rents out Bernard's cottage.
The next day Simon is doing much better. The gal from before introduces herself properly as Joan. She doesn't think too much of Wells but she likes her brother even less and his gang even less than that. When Wells offers her an escape, at least for the day at least, she accepts and they speed away on Wells' boat. A member of the gang watches though.
Joan has to come home at some point but when she does King and co. are waiting. Wells and Joan hide out at Bernard's cottage but eventually they flee right over the cliffs and down into a series of caves. Bernard isn't happy about that as they just interrupted his class.
Yes, class; Bernard is a teacher, sort of. He has a class of four girls and five boys, all nine years old. They've never been outside, in fact Bernard has never physically talked to them as he conducts his lessons via close circuit television. There's a very good reason for that, a reason Wells, Joan, and King are about to find out very shortly...
A shame this isn't talked about more. A perfect Cold War themed film but Reed is the standout. A stock delinquent character with anyone else, Reed plays him so damn good I'm disappointed we didn't see him in other films.
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