THE PRESENCE OF HORROR GENRE genre at the Singapore International Film Festival 1996 inspired these recollections: John Carpenter's remake of the seminal Village of the Damned featured in this year's Singapore Festival of Arts All-Night Horrorthon, is a chilling account of what happens when a small community of sinister children, endowed with telepathic and destructive powers, gradually unfolds evil plans for world domination. In this current age of contemporary film-making technology, the film's sound and special effects are superb, but that isn't what makes the film frightening. It is the notion of innocent, "helpless" children, rising above the domination that parents, teachers and adults at large have traditionally exerted over them, turning on the conventional authority figures, threatening them, violating them, and ultimately triumphing over them. This is the theme of the enfant diabolique, or diabolical child, which has found expression and gained favour in numerous films made all over...
