The blacklisted American stylist Joseph Losey was damned in Hollywood but no one could stop him making outspoken films in England. Ostensibly a science fiction thriller, These Are the Damned is one of Losey's most radical statements on the politics of violence. In an audacious mixture of metaphors, he links nuclear holocaust with Teddy Boys and institutionalized destruction of young and artistic minds; the result is a potent moral fable of a world gone mad. In a cavernous underground hideout at Weymouth, a group of children live sealed off from the rest of the world, captives of the scientist Bernard (Alexander Knox), who “teaches” them via television. Born of mothers accidentally exposed to radiation, the ice-blooded children are being groomed for the day when the radiation-exposed shall inherit the earth. Above ground, an American tourist (Macdonald Carey), a gang of rebellious youths, and a reclusive artist (Viveca Lindfors) become drawn into Bernard's poisonous circle in a series of coincidences brilliantly sewn together by Losey's fantastic symbolic sense.