SPOILERS
1.FILM - they are the result of an "impulse from space". They seem to intuit that they are of alien stock, hence their "clamming up" at Zellaby's inquiry.
2. NOVEL - they are the result of a ufo (shaped, as photographed from the air, like the bowl of an inverted spoon) that set down and "switched off" Midwich.
The novel leaves open three possible, creepy scenarios for the pregnancies that soon follow:
A) Actual intercourse (not likely due to the short amount of time involved, lack of "humanoid alien" activity from aerial photos, and no post-"Day Out" evidence of aliens having wandered about the village).
B) Artificial insemination by unknown techniques.
C) Xenogenesis - the novel's definitive answer. A totally alien embryo (i.e., not mixed with the human mother's and an alien father's DNA), that has been implanted, again by unknown means.
The film couldn't be as graphically sexual as the novel, so the film changed the means of pregnancy from xenogenetic implantation to a much "cleaner" but more vague "pulse from space" - which, incidentally (not in the book) also affected fertility in some plants growing in Midwich.
The book leaves the question up in the air of the children's identity.
They could equally be implants of the ufo alien race's own kind. Presumably, the parents, as mature beings of the species, would have no problem controlling their offsprings' mental abilities. OTOH, the xenogenetic implants could be a completely artificial species, invented by the aliens for purely experimental purposes.
The book, in fact, suggests that the aliens are like a team of scientists who introduce new species onto islands, just to observe the results, "and," the book asks, "what are planets but islands in space?" The plague of alien newborns is an "Outside" tampering with evolution, and a challenge to the survival of Earth's dominant species.
WARNING: Village of the Damned has nothing in common with its "sequel", The Children of the Damned. In the "Children" movie, the kids are not from space, but are a semi-predictable jag in human genetic development, and a possible NATURAL "next step" in human evolution.
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