Village of the Damned

Special Features (Blu-ray)

• Commentary with Steve Haberman: Haberman is a screenwriter who has worked extensively with Mel Brooks, scripting Life Stinks and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. He is also a film historian with works that include Silent Screams: The History of the Silent Horror Film (which no doubt explains his suggestion at the end of his commentary that VotD would work well as a silent film). Haberman's commentary provides interesting information and some astute analysis of the film's technical accomplishments, but it's a bad sign when there are long silences in a 77-minute commentary. Was there really so little to say?
• Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:01): "Today their control reaches out into space. Tomorrow will it girdle the globe?" The effort to play on the fears of a Sputnik-era audience terrified by the Soviet lead in the space race couldn't be more direct. As Haberman's commentary explains, the emotionless Midwich "cuckoo" children were seen by contemporary audiences as avatars of communism, much like the pod-people of the original Cold War Invasion of the Body Snatchers (released in 1956).

Blu-ray Screenshots