Beware The Stare

[Riklaa]

BBC Radio 4 - Beware the Stare - 11-12-2003 11-30 The Cuckoos are coming! The Cuckoos are coming! Blonde haired, shiny eyed, and ready to stare mankind into oblivion. John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos and its 1960 film version, Village of the Damned, have spooked generations with their quietly terrifying tale of alien invasion in middle England. Re-uniting cast and crew from The Village of the Damned is just the beginning for Alan Dein as he goes in search of Midwich on film and in print. What inspired John Wyndham to pen this tale of extraterrestrial rape, mass infanticide and suicide bombing? How can we know so little about the man who put Triffids in the backyard and Cuckoos in our homes? ------- Beware The Stare! To mark the centenary of John Wyndham’s birth and the making of a classic British science fiction chiller,Alan Dein goes in search of the mythical Midwich and some real cuckoos. When Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos (currently Radio 4’s Classic Serial on Sunday afternoons) was filmed in 1960 as Village Of The Damned, it unleashed a terrifying pack of blonde, scary eyed RADA moppets to haunt the dreams of generations. Late at night, in spooky black and white, this little science fiction gem turned John Wyndham’s classic story into a paranoid British Bodysnatchers for children and parents. Repeatedly screened in the Seventies, it burned itself into the nightmares of children everywhere.And now it’s reunion time. On 30 October Radio 4 gathered together many of the original “cuckoos” at Letchmore Heath, the cinematic Midwich, to hear how the film has lingered in their memories and what happened to those who once set out to rule the Earth. Alan Dein meets the children who should have taken over the world, goes in search of the real village that inspired Wyndham’s classic novel and uncovers the elusive genius behind some of Britain’s most enduring tales of future apocalypses (Midwich Cuckoos, Day Of The Triffids and The Kraken Wakes). Presenter/Alan Dein, Producer/Mark Burman --------- 2003 - Factual; Documentaries; Arts

BBC Radio 4 - Beware the Stare - 11-12-2003 11-30.mp3