In Weymouth, he meets 20-year-old Joan, who lures him into a brutal mugging at the hands of her brother King and his motorbike gang.

Their home is under continuous video surveillance and they are educated via closed circuit television by Bernard, who deflects questions about their purpose and their isolation with promises that they will learn the answers someday.

The house is surrounded by King's gang but the couple escape and reach the relative safety of a nearby military base.

Joan and Simon plan to rescue the children and they pressure King into helping them; the visitors soon feel unwell.

The final scene depicts holidaymakers enjoying the beach, unable to hear the desperate cries of the imprisoned children nearby.

[9] Losey was hesitant to accept a directorial assignment from Hammer Productions, a studio “internationally associated with the horror genre and work of a deliberately provocative nature.” [10] His 1960 film The Criminal (1960), a “box office failure” limited Losey’s options, and he accepted the offer despite objecting to screenplays requiring “explicit physical violence.”[11] The Damned was produced by Hammer, which had enjoyed great success with such horror films as Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein.

Frink not only lent these but also was on location for their shooting, and coached Lindfors on performing the sculptor's method of building up plaster, which was then ferociously worked and carved.

[14] The film was shot at Hammer's Bray Studios and on location around Weymouth, the Isle of Portland and nearby Chesil Beach.

[16] In spite of the discreet release, it was noticed by a film critic from The Times, who gave it a very positive review, stating that "Joseph Losey is one of the most intelligent, ambitious and constantly exciting film-makers now working in this country, if not indeed in the world—The Damned is very much a film to be seen, for at its best it hits with a certainty of aim which is as exciting as it is devastating, and hits perhaps in a place where it is important we should be hurt.

[21] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The Damned is a folie de grandeur which demonstrates ... that Losey is a brilliant and often inventive technician whose uncertain selective powers are just as likely to lead him to absurdity as art.

...Nevertheless, there are moments throughout which compel attention: an inexplicable menace latent in a calm shot out to sea; Viveca Lindfors (who gives point and dignity to every scene in which she appears) crooning helplessly over the shattered remnants of one of her statues, wilfully smashed by King; the strangely ritual little scene in which the coldblooded children take turns to touch, solemnly and wonderingly, the warm-blooded strangers who have invaded their hideout.

"[22] Critic Dave Kehr, writing in The New York Times called the film "a slippery, unsettling blend of social commentary and science-fiction".

[23] Film historians James Palmer and Michael Riley call The Damned “an effective polemic against the horrors of nuclear warfare.”[24] Writing in Senses of Cinema, critic Dan Callahan, places the film only incidentally in the sci-fi genre, and more so as warning of approaching Armageddon: “The Damned is a sincere and outraged portrait of a world on the verge of apocalypse, only partially compromised by a science fiction plot involving radioactive kids.”[25] Callahan adds that The Damned marked an inflection in Losey’s career, gaining him a measure of legitimacy in the international film establishment.