In a cavernous underground hideout beneath the cliffs at Weymouth, youngchildren live sealed off from the rest of the world, captives of thescientist Bernard (Alexander Knox), who teaches them, or rather controlstheir learning, via television. Born of mothers accidentally exposed toradiation, the ice-blooded children are being groomed for the day whenthe radiation-exposed shall inherit the earth. Above ground, an Americantourist (Macdonald Carey), a gang of rebellious youths, and a reclusiveartist (Viveca Lindfors) become drawn into Bernard's poisonous circle ina series of coincidences brilliantly sewn together by Joseph Losey'sfantastic symbolic sense. This blacklisted American artist was damned inHollywood but no one stopped him making outspoken films in England.Ostensibly a science fiction thriller, These Are the Damned is one ofLosey's most radical statements on the politics of institutionalizedviolence...and rebellion. "That isn't very democratic, Sir," says one ofthe girls before these strangely dehumanized children destroy thetelevision cameras and screens that link them with the eye of themaster. ("The worst of this incident," Bernard says after recapturinghis charges, "is that my children will think of themselves asprisoners.") Andrew Sarris has called the film "one of the brainiest andmost visually striking works in the field of science fiction.... Boththe editing and compositions of the black-and-white widescreenphotography are orchestrated in a bravura manner and build inexorably toa bleakly catastrophic climax." (JB)