You know the children with the glowing eyes. Platinum blond, moving as one, staring down grown men until they turn their weapons on themselves.

Four years after Village of the Damned (1960), the same British studio made an arguably superior sequel. CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1964) brings six impossibly gifted children to London, each from a different nation, to be studied. Every government that sent one soon wants its child back, to be used as a weapon.

When the children realize what the adults intend, they flee and barricade themselves in a bombed-out London church, while soldiers and scientists gather in the street outside.

Its screenwriter said he meant Children of the Damned as a moral fable about the Cold War, about how easily it could turn hot. His name was John Briley, and twenty years later he won the Academy Award for writing Gandhi.