Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Ian West ★★★½ 4

  Starts off like a teens gone wild movie where the sister of lead goon Oliver Reed shacks up with an older man and they head off on his boat... then they stumble into a secret government facility with radioactive children and this thing takes a big turn into bleakness. Satisfying sci-fi yarn from Hammer pulled the rug out from me—I genuinely felt for the children in this and the impending narrative doom was quite the gut punch.

  Cool movie!

• 

  Review by Sarah Jane 🔪 ★★★½ 9

  Black leather, black leather, smash smash smash
  Black leather, black leather, kick kick kick...

  These little black and white Hammer films are great. This one is actually science fiction. And it is another one that stars Oliver Reed. What a looker he was when he was young/pre-accident. His characters in these early Hammer films are generally sinister in nature and this one is no exception. He is the leader of a motorcycle gang who terrorizes a seaside town. Meanwhile, a top-secret military base is just outside of town and they are up to some shenanigans with children being kept in some underground caves. Naturally, the two factions do encounter each other and well, things happen.

  This was on a double-disc with another great black and white Hammer, Never Take Sweets From a Stranger. Both are worthy of checking out.

• 

  Review by mrbalihai ★★★½ 6

  Neither sci-fi fish nor juvenile-delinquent fowl, this creepy, downbeat Hammer film by American director, Joseph Losey, mashes up multiple genres, occasionally in ways that are quite effective, but more often than not, the various pieces of the puzzle just don't quite fit together.

  The Damned starts out as a film about Teddy Boys on a seaside rampage, and does a fairly convincing job of it. Oliver Reed, as usual, seems to crawl right into the skin of a vicious gang leader who uses his beautiful sister as a lure to attract unsuspecting male tourists, who he then bashes and robs, accompanied by the minimalist rockabilly refrains of Black Leather Rock. However, this leads to a rather age-inappropriate and improbable romance…

• 

  Review by AJ ★★★½ 2

  I really love how Hammer spins a sci-fi story. What makes The Damned so interesting is that it feels like a Hammer produced film and a Joseph Losey directed film. As a result, both of the influences are a bit more muted than I'd like, but, by no means, does that make it a poor showing. I'd go so far as to say they build off each other quite well.

  I can't wait to binge rewatch some Hammer again this fall.

  Joseph Losey #10

• 

  Review by threepenny ★★★★ 2

  Oliver Reed so creepy about keeping his sister a virgin that he has a whole biker gang enlisted to keep tabs on her 24/7. But she jumps onto an old guy's boat anyway because - hello, he has a boat, obviously (if you're complaining about the age difference of these two, you apparently neglected to factor that in). They all accidentally end up in a super-secret facility housing a group of children who are not allowed to see any other human beings, as part of some top secret government project related to nuclear Armageddon. From there it's the government agency vs. the brother, sister, and boyfriend to save the kids. The sci-fi elements don't kick in until almost an hour,…

• 

  Review by Flynch ★★★★

  Bei dem bekannten und zu Recht beliebten HAMMER STUDIO denkt man ja zuallererst  an Dracula, Frankenstein und allerlei Gothic-Horror,  Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing,  Anthologien und vielleicht noch an den einen oder anderen Thriller.
  Das sie auch anders können zeigt nur zu deutlich dieser Film.
  Zur Entstehungszeit ist ihm leider der Erfolg  , trotz ähnlicher Thematik wie DAS DORF DER VERDAMMTEN, verpönt geblieben und muss leider noch heute  ein Schattendasein führen und eher  als Geheimtipp  gelten. 
  SIE SIND VERDAMMT ist ein ungewöhnlicher, dystopischer Ausflug in die Doomsdaygefilde, der einem sofort  sogartig erwischt und nicht mehr loslässt.
  Die anfängliche Beatnik/Ganggeschichte und eine kleine eigenartige Romanze vermischen sich  nach einer gewissen Zeit zu einem  SciFi-Stoff  und münden  in einem, für damalige Zeiten,  gewagten…

• 

  Review by Yves Bouwen ★★★

  A British sixties predecessor of Akira, including a motorcycle gang and (of course) radioactive children.
  Right up my alley. Not completely convinced though.

• 

  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★ 4

  The Damned is a different type of Hammer film, being more theoretical and cerebral. It is a fairly fatalistic look at the nuclear age and the supposedly inevitable nuclear apocalypse. This degree of scientific and political debate is notable in the second half and actually really interesting. Which is good, as the entire first half is an entirely different movie and plays as a romantic drama. Though with its almost fascist-like gang characters, The Damned seems almost about social decay at large. It's an interesting film with strong, simple cinematography. There are storytelling issues for sure, but it is overall a pretty decent film.

  Side-note: The creepy age difference between the romantic couple feels rather inappropriate. Especially when he took her out to sea and all I could think about was "The Implication".

  Hammer Ranked

• 

  Review by Adam Hursey ★★★½ 2

  Support Your Local Library April 2023

  An unintentional Joseph Losey double feature (with Secret Ceremony), and what will probably be my last Hammer Horror film until spooky season (which is like, what, August now?).

  A gang of British street punks uses the leader's sister (the leader is played by Oliver Reed) as bait to rob from men who show interest in her. This time, it is an American tourist. Despite the mugging, he ends up taking the sister away on his boat to an island where children are being held by the British government for some sort of experiment. The proto-Never Let Me Go sci-fi film you never knew you needed in your life.

  A tale of two films for…

• 

  Review by Digital Press ★★★½

  That opening song! “black leather, black leather, black leather, crash crash crash, black leather, black leather, black leather, smash smash smash”, I can’t get it out of my head!

  The lead actor here is a creepy middle-aged man who has run off with a beautiful young girl, and they’re pursued by menacing, jealous Oliver Reed and his gang in black leather, black leather, black leather, la la la AAAARGH! They stumble into a secret underground military facility populated by nine well-behaved but very mysterious children.

  The Damned is primarily mystery and drama, the fun part is trying to figure out who are the good ones and who are the bad ones! It’s well-acted and very well produced but its strongest element is the script. I’m sure over the years the underlying theme here has become irrelevant and then relevant and then irrelevant again, over and over. In 2023 it may be a little outdated but it is most certainly relevant.

• 

  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★½ 4

  Ghoul Britannia - The British Horror Month

  I'm going to call this film The Damned. Because it's a better title and because it reminds me of the band.

  The Damned isn't a horror film at all. In fact, for the entirety of its first half it was nothing more than a romantic drama. I remember reading a news story back in the early 90s about a bloke who had been arrested for driving a vehicle that was non-roadworthy because it was two halves of two different cars that he had welded together in the middle. The Damned reminded me of that.

  I'm not suggesting that director Joseph Losey should have been arrested for making this film but if you didn't…

• 

  Review by Zach Nabors ★★★

  Maybe the weakest post-Hollywood Losey I’ve seen. The acting isn’t good except for Knox and Reed. One of the problems is that Reed is underutilized, though he does get to really shine at the end. If the entire film would have been like the last 15-20 minutes than this would have nearly been a masterpiece, but it’s fairly muddled and dull, until it looses the bits that aren’t working, e.g. the romance and just leans heavily into anti-government, conspiracy sci-fi thriller. This film makes turns toward greatness the darker it gets and what a perfectly bleak ending. It is Losey, so he finds enough excellent ways to get off some of his visual ideas, even when the bulk of the story is working against his eye for things.