bkoganbing The Space Children has engineer Adam Williams arriving with wife Peggy Webber and sons Michel Ray and Johnny Crawford to work and live at a government rocket facility. The USA is about to take a giant leap frog ahead of the Russians in the arms race. The next big launch is to orbit a hydrogen bomb in space directed and controlled in orbit by our Defense Department. The Russians or anyone else gets out of line and they get their's. Of course there is reason to believe the Russians are also pursuing the same type of orbiting weaponry.A strange object, part brain, part rock lands on earth and it has a mysterious affect on the children. By children I don't mean just Ray and Crawford. Johnny Washbrook, Sandy Descher and others join in some kind of collective consciousness, a lot like the Village Of The Damned and strange things start happening around the base, including the death of Russell Johnson who is far from the wise professor of Gilligan's Island. Instead he's the mean stepfather of Johnny Washbrook and no one is really mourning his loss.What's going on is not something I'll reveal. I will say that this film also has elements of The Boy With Green Hair and Amazing Grace And Chuck. It's a sincere film with a nice message, but poorly executed and directed.

mark.waltz If you instantly think of the 1961 cult classic "Village of the Damned" and its 1964 follow-up, "Children of the Damned", then you are not alone. This is definitely a C-grade variety of that plot with a bit of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" thrown in. A whoosh through the sky gets the attention of a child whose parents are arriving at a nuclear plant where a missile is ready for testing. The parents do not see this strand of something moving through the air, so when the boy disappears to go exploring in beach-front caves, he encounters a strange group of children and a little tiny blob of something that somehow gives them directions to sabotage the launching of this missile. A sign from God? Visitors from outer space? Hopefully not that creepy flem-like blob from a recent Steve McQueen movie that swallows its victims whole and has that ghoulish song about that thing that creeps and glides across the floor.It all unravels in 69 minutes, thankfully enough time to eat a bag of popcorn and laugh at the silly adults who are at first unaware of how the children are acting different all the time. A father chases his son over rocks, repeating over and over how he's going to break his neck when he finds them then literally becomes a frozen pop-circle when he sees the blob. Scientists wonder how the children break into the locked military base, then simply tell them to "scat!" without further investigation. And when the blob, which has gotten bigger, starts batting a single eye, don't be drinking your soda, 'cause you'll douse your TV screen with another sticky substance as you accidentally spit it out in laughter.I know the writers of this movie probably meant well in the nuclear era of the late 50's, but the unintentional humor takes this film all over the place. Throw in such TV sitcom actors as Russell Johnson, Jackie Coogan and a toupee-less Raymond Bailey, and you'll find yourself snickering. When Bailey (Mr. Drysdale of "The Beverly Hillbillies") confronts the eye-batting blob and pleads to be let in on the secret, this film hits its nadir. No fan of "The Addams Family" will take Coogan (Uncle Fester) seriously as he disciplines a child. A biblical quote at the end tries to explain it all but just adds to the ridiculousness of it all.

MartinHafer "The Space Children" is a rather obscure sci-fi film--and after seeing it, I can understand why. Now I am not saying it's a terrible film--but it's not a very good one, that's for sure! The film is set near a secret military base working on some rocket. An alien force doesn't want this project to commence and so it approached the children of the workers. The alien 'thingie' looks a lot like the Horta from the original "Star Trek" series--like a big squishy brain that grows. It not only holds a strong sway over the children but it also has the ability to make adults who see it unable to talk or write about what they saw--it even has the ability to kill! What's next? Well, I don't want to spoil it, but it all ends with the kids telling the parents that bombs and the like are bad and they all are about to sing "Kumbaya" when the credits begin to roll! The film is preachy, preachy, preachy. Now a similar sort of thing was done with "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and it worked very well due to excellent writing. Here, however, it just comes off as kind of stupid.

Michael_Elliott Space Children, The (1958) * 1/2 (out of 4) This minor sci-fi flick has pretty much been forgotten by everyone, which might not be too shocking on its own but director Jack Arnold has a very big following for his other films in the genre like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON so it says something when one of them is pretty much forgotten. This time out a group of parents take their kids to a missile launching site where the kids are soon lured into a cave by a mysterious light. Inside the cave is an alien who takes over the kids and use them to try and get their parents to give up their nuclear connections. Even at just 68-minutes this movie is just way too slow and poorly shot to be of much interest to anyone. I think it's obvious that Paramount didn't spend too much money on the film as everything from the cinematography to the special effects look rather cheap. The "alien" here actually looks like a glowing brain that continues to get bigger as the film goes along. In a cheap, Roger Corman type of way the effect looks OK but you can't help but think they were trying to do something more but were unable to due to the budget. Another problem are the kid actors who are just downright bland and boring in their parts. I found them to be rather laughable at certain times and none of them were good enough to keep me interested in what was going on. The supporting cast includes some familiar names like Jackie Coogan, Richard Shannon and Raymond Bailey. The film is clearly trying to be yet another THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL clone but nothing in it works. The message is rather silly and everything else is just too cheap or being to be entertaining. There's no question Arnold was a major name on the genre and his work deserves to be rediscovered by those unfamiliar with it but at the same time they should keep forgetting this one.