THE DAMNED Director: JOSEPH LOSEY U.K. 1963 BLACK AND WHITE ANAMORPHIC 35MM 96 MIN. Book cinema tickets Described by Time Out as the strangest film ever to come out of Hammer studios (so much so that it was shelved for two years), The Damned has gathered a deserved reputation as one of the finest examples of British science fiction cinema. It has curious anticipations of A Clockwork Orange, with its violent gangs and intimidating symbolic sculptures, but it surpasses even that film for future shock. On the run from a motorcycle gang headed by Oliver Reed, an unlikely romantic couple (Macdonald Carey and Shirley Anne Field) stumble across a hideout occupied by radioactive children, who are part of a scientific experiment for survival in the event of inevitable nuclear war. In some ways a British counterpart to Losey’s Hollywood debut, The Boy with Green Hair (1948), which was also a fable about the plight of children in a post-atomic age, this is much more pessimistic and gathers with some visual majesty towards a haunting ending , with young voices crying for help in a heedless universe already contaminated by destruction and despair. Director: JOSEPH LOSEY U.K. 1963 BLACK AND WHITE ANAMORPHIC 35MM 96 MIN.