Sci-Fi Tykes

Children of the Damned. Half a dozen bright, attractive but inexplicably fey youngsters take refuge in an abandoned London church, where strange things begin to happen. What's to be done? "Destroy them," say British authorities. Officials of the U.S., Indian, Red Chinese, Russian and Nigerian governments agree that ruthless action is necessary. For these kids, brought from their homelands around the globe for scientific study, are extraordinary beings. Evil-eyed, they can will adults to do their bidding, even to commit murder and suicide. They can charge a dilapidated organ with such high-decibel energy that it becomes a ghastly weapon against their would-be assassins. Anything that one of the six sees, hears or reads is, on the instant, telepathically absorbed by the others. "Do you still want to take them to your embassies?" asks a wry observer.

At its horrific best, this little science-fiction thriller so deftly juggles audience sympathies that rubbing out the small fry begins to sound quite sensible. Their own mothers tremble or curse at the sight of them, for all have sprung, fatherless, from some worldwide parthenogenetic conspiracy--a detail borrowed from the eerie Village of the Damned (1960). The sequel pales in comparison, as do most sequels. But it is filmed with taste and acted in crisp style, particularly by Alan Badel as a witty geneticist who strikes just that note of detachment that makes the whole thing seem lightly plausible. The movie's spell holds nearly to the end, when all the far-out fun of pseudoscience suddenly shapes up as a message. Too bad that those sinister boys and girls have nothing more menacing to offer, at long last, than a muckleheaded morality play. In the sci-fi world of monsters, who wants to think about man's inhumanity to man?

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