clarification among the three films re: the Children's odd parentage

I posted this in the Village of the Damned board because some viewers are not clear on the parentage question as it appears in the original novel, the Saunders film, and the 1964 "sequel":

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1. John Wyndham's original novel, The Midwich Cuckoos:

Midwich has a Dayout of being shielded by an invisible force field, during which a high flying plane takes a picture of the village and an object looking like "the inverted bowl of spoon" is seen just sitting quietly in the middle of the village. Radar reports confirm that a ufo had come down extremely fast that night. The Dayout ends, the object has vanished, and a few weeks later every female of childbearing age is found to be pregnant. Much discussion results in the scientific consensus that the fetuses are not human; they are not hybrids; rather, they are completely alien, and the method of insemination is decided to have been "implantation", and the process called "xenogenesis". Thus the Children - according to the original story - are definitely alien beings who had used their mothers' wombs merely as biological incubators.

2. The Village of the Damned - over on that board - was obviously renamed for theatrical release.

Midwich has a Dayout, but no landed ufo is photographed. The rest of the story pretty much follows the book, except in the matter of the Children's parentage. In the movie screenplay, the Children are still alien beings, but now a putative "wave from space" substitutes for the much creepier and sexually explicit notion of xenogenetic implantation from the novel. A mysterious "wave from space" is much "safer" than an implied alien phallus or instrumental/ functional equivalent. The "wave" idea is supported in the film by showing some mysteriously blossoming flowers, supposedly in reaction to the "wave's" unknown effects. The mass pregnancies that ensue are blamed on the "wave" rather than on a much more direct interference by ufo occupants.

3. The purported "sequel" film: Children of the Damned, the subject of this board and this thread:

This time, the Children are not considered to be alien at all, but rather a new evolutionary mutation, the potential next human stage, who, with their odd mental powers, might one day replace us as the planet's dominant species.
However, the film does, inconsistently, permit us also to consider the alien angle...but not very convincingly.
The only similarity to the original cinematic Midwich Children is that their eyes still glow when exercising their special powers - but for the rest of it, there is no similarity - they are not even all blonde-haired, and they definitely do not look as if they are cut from the identical alien genetic fabric. Thus: in contrast to the novel and the first film, there are probably no alien Children in this "sequel" - only a potential "new breed" ... of us.

4. The Carpenter film with Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, etc. Sorry about this...but...frankly I do not recall what this film claims the Children's genetic makeup/parentage is supposed to be, but I don't really care - I thought it was an awful film and do not consider it part of the "franchise" - it's a poorly-done remake, imo.

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Hopefully this is helpful to some viewers and I really do have some confidence that I've got the facts straight.

:)