Nick Riddle
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781911325529
- eISBN:
- 9781800342330
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781911325529.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, ...
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This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, or reworks, a good deal more of the source novel than Losey suggested: the names of the principal characters; the youth gang; the love story; the southern-England setting; the irradiated, bunker-bound children; the helicopter as malign pursuer; the patriarch committing horrors in the name of human survival. The Damned was criticised for its bleakness, but if anything, The Children of Light is bleaker still. The chapter then addresses how The Children of Light attracted the attention of Hammer, before looking at the principal actors of The Damned.Less
This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, or reworks, a good deal more of the source novel than Losey suggested: the names of the principal characters; the youth gang; the love story; the southern-England setting; the irradiated, bunker-bound children; the helicopter as malign pursuer; the patriarch committing horrors in the name of human survival. The Damned was criticised for its bleakness, but if anything, The Children of Light is bleaker still. The chapter then addresses how The Children of Light attracted the attention of Hammer, before looking at the principal actors of The Damned.
