Why So Blu?

Children Of The Damned (Blu-ray Review)

Warner Archive Collection released a sweet lot of horror titles back in October. While late to the game on reviewing them, the review copies weren’t sent out til later on. In the current climate of home video physical media distributing, there have been many a fulfilment center delay on titles each and every month. So that’s not too surprising at the end of the day. Nonetheless, still very exciting with what they chose to put out last month. My first bite on the lot is the cult classic, Children of the Damned. The film makes its debut on Blu-ray with a restored picture, lossless audio, a trailer and a commentary track. The official release date for this was October 26th, but its available to order now from the paid Amazon Associates link below.

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Film

The United Nations conducts a global survey on child development, identifying six children with exceptional intelligence. All were born under mysterious circumstances, with the mothers claiming they were conceived without a father. Brought to London to be studied, the children escape to an abandoned church. Alarmed by the children’s telekinetic powers, the government prepares to destroy them, while psychologist Col. Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) tries to convince the authorities to spare them.

Children of the Damned is the somewhat thematical sequel to Village of the Damned. This and its predecessor are some of the originators of the “creepy kid” subgenre in horror. They are the ones that sort of launched it into a more popular or noteworthy realm. Children carries on the eerie telepathic exploits of the kids in a more intimate story and setting.

Anton Leader’s film is effective yet feels incredibly small in scale and story. While we are witnessing this “big” kind of event or this incredible danger to the world, its limited to primarily one setting and just a couple of people. The story feels as if these are the only people on the planet or that they live in a ghost town. But, the focus is the kid and the case and it gets by on those essentials.

Despite what was likely a budgetary limitation the film still works. There are some very creepy and surprising sequence of violence and terror that could probably still disturb or haunt a person today. And there’s also a moral debate at the forefront that works for some meaty material for the adult characters to chew on and the audience to think over in their head. Its a decent little sequel and the film holds pretty decent on its own, detached from the original and as its own standalone piece of work.

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Layers: BD-50

Clarity/Detail: Children of the Damned comes to Blu-ray for the first time with a wonderful looking transfer. It comes geared up with a “new 2021 HD master”, which looks rather impressive. The print used looks to be in top quality its quite sharp, crisp and has plenty of good details and textures to go along with great saturation in the black levels.

Depth:  Depth of field is pretty impressive here. Mainly the interiors and especially the chapel where the kids hide out. Camera movements and angles give great spacing and pushback. Movements are filmic and natural.

Black Levels: Blacks are deep and almost at a natural level. No important information is hidden. Shadows, shading, nighttime scenes and saturation is quite terrific. No crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: N/A

Flesh Tones: Skin tones have a gray/white hybrid with complexion depending on the performer that stays consistent from start to finish. Facial details and texture is quite clear and discernible from any medium and close up shot as well as some choice distant shots.

Noise/Artifacts: None

Audio

Audio Format(s): English 2.0 Mono DTS-HD MA

Subtitles: English SDH

Dynamics: Children of the Damned has a very nice, fine audio track that sounds like its in very good shape with only the faintest of hiss. Some of the louder sound impulses prove very loud and effective here with this nicely balanced mix that has some good depth and rather nice volume levels to add some engagement that’s impressive for a mono track.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: N/A

Surround Sound Presentation: N/A

Dialogue Reproduction: Vocals are clear and crisp.

Extras

Audio Commentary

• By John Briley

Theatrical Trailer (HD, 2:23)

Summary

Children of the Damned is a quirky little film with some dark connotations that enable it to deliver despite some budgetary shortcomings. The presentation here from Warner Archive Collection is pretty brilliant and it comes stocked with a solid commentary track to serve as a nice extra from a film with not likely a lot of its cast and crew still around. Its very cool that WAC has released this to pair up with their previous release of Village of the Damned.

This is a paid Amazon Associates link