74. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham

This is the novel that Village of the Damned is based on. And I have to say, I was expecting more menace from the children. I don’t recall any scenes where they all looked intimidatingly at someone at the same time with their glowing golden eyes. In here, those creepy children are two sets of hive minds – one for the girls, one for the boys, so they don’t come together to explode people’s brains like Scanners or anything. Fine.

Even without a fully collective evil version of the Care Bear stare on the page, this is a good story and yet still felt like too much is off the page for me. I saw all the movies first; I don’t think that helped me. I still liked it. I did keep picturing the George Sanders (1960) version of Zellaby, who really does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of dealing with the Children and explaining them in the book.

In the 1960 film there is a more psychic element coming off the Children too, which leads to the final showdown. In the book it’s more the Russians killing off the last other colony of Children besides Midwich that sets it all off. It’s both more global and more local in The Midwich Cuckoos than in either Village of the Damned, but I guess they cover that a little bit more in Children of the Damned.

Camille’s version of the evil child psychic stare, or even the Care Bear stare, involves suspicion and just one eye. She acts a little bit like my Pickles, but she hasn’t got her powers.