The Omen Trilogy

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I’d revisit the Omen Trilogy. With the benefit of hindsight there are some underlying themes to these films that really leap out at me now. Let’s take them in order, shall we?

The Omen (1976)

The film opens with Robert Thorn weeping for his still born son somewhere in Rome. Fortunately there is a creepy old priest standing by who offers to perform “the old Switheroo”, replacing Thorn’s natural dead son with a living orphaned kid.

Thorn takes the un-naturally hairy baby in to his lovely but fragile wife, played by Lee Remick.

Cut to 5 years later, and Thorn is now ambassador to the Court of St James. At no time does St James make an appearance however. Things seem to be going well until their son Damien’s 5th birthday party. Lee Remick (“Mom”) takes Damien away from his doting nanny, who then locks eyes with an Evil Dog and promptly hangs herself from the roof of the house, first shouting to Damien that “it’s all for you!” and freaking out all Damien’s guests as well as a clown.

Soon the dead Nanny is replaced by the smoldering hot Mrs. Blaylock (one of the LOL moments in this film is when Mrs B introduces herself to the Thorns. Robert takes one look, grins and tells his wife “I think she’ll work out just fine!”.

Soon events conspire to convince Thorn that all is not as it seems with his son. For one thing, He goes completely BugFuck when the Thorns are driving towards a church to attend a wedding. Damien goes after his “mom” like a crazed Baboon. Later Damien and Mom visit a drive through Zoo where a pack of Baboon’s literally go BugFuck on their car, just from Damien’s presence.

Meanwhile Robert is being stalked by a crazy ass Priest (or Dr Who depending on how you want to view it) who’s first words to Thorn are “we haven’t much time”. Friends, if at any point in your life a total stranger comes up to you and says those words, know that trouble is coming.

The priest assures Thorn that his son is a child of the Devil and must be killed. Strangely, Thorn has doubts, and tells the Priest “I never want to see you again!”. Happily, the priest is soon impaled by a Lightning Rod that is struck by lightening (!) and falls off the roof of a church. I swear the priest waits a full minute while the lightening rod topples then falls, then nails him.

A Hippy Reporter (played by David Warner) has taken snaps of the priest and was also at Damien’s party. When he develops his film he finds a shadow of a noose around the Nanny before she hangs herself, then a shadowy Lightening Rod impaling the priest, days before the real thing hits. The final straw comes when he accidentally takes a picture of himself in mirror, and sees his head being cut off!

Hippy Reporter calls Thorn, shows him the snaps, then takes him to the Crazy Impaled Priest’s apartment (or TARDIS) which is covered by pages of bibles and a journal helpfully explaining the story.

Next thing you know, Thorne and Hippy are in Rome tracking down the Creepy Priest from the beginning of the film, When they find him they discover that he’s “fallen from grace” with a withered eyeball and face, exactly as quoted in the Bible! He can’t speak but he scribbles the name of a Etrusian cemetery where Thorns real son, and Damien’s mother are buried.

Soon the two intrepid adventurers are in said cemetery where they find two clearly marked graves that are exactly 5 years old! This is the creepiest part of the movie: one grave has a poor little baby skeleton with a big hole in the back of its head. The other has the complete, articulated skeleton of a jackal. (AKA Mommy)

Suddenly (and after they’ve uncovered the graves) a pack of Evil Dogs attacks! This is the worst scene in the movie, as the two men are somehow able to fend off 2-3 dogs each with almost no damage (those dogs should have ripped them to pieces, yet they get away almost Scott Free)

Thorn and Hipper Reporter next go to Israel to learn how to kill Damien. There they meet an Exorcist/Archeologist named Bugenhagen who gives 6 knives to Thorn and assures him it’s OK to murder a 5 year old boy because, after all, he’s not really Human.

Thorn is initially repulsed by this, throws the knives into an empty street, and begins to walk away. Hippy Reporter assures him “if you won’t do it, I will!” goes to grab the knives, but gets defenestrated by a traveling pane of glass. (Photographic Prophecy fulfilled!)

While Thorn is gallivanting around the world, Damien is up to typical 5 year old hijinks. Like knocking his mom off a chair, situated over a loooong fall from the second floor to the wooden floor of the living room. Mom has already been having suspicions about Damien (after all, the Baboons don’t like him!) and has been seeing a psychiatrist. This incident tips her over the edge, so to speak. Why attack “mom”? Well, she is pregnant, and we can’t have sibling rivalry with the son of Satan, now can we? The fall aborts the kid, and poor Lee is pretty much crazy by now. But just to get her out of the way completely, Mrs. Blaylock throws here out of the hospital window, pitching her perfectly to hit the exact middle of an ambulance and pretty much destroying it in the process (only thing missing in that scene is the ambulance exploding when she hits it).

Well, now Thorn is pissed. He drives to the house with a clever plan to make Damien into a Human Pincushion. Evil Dog is back but Thorn cleverly lures it into the basement (apparently Evil Dogs have no sense of smell and rely on eyesight and faulty logic to track their prey)

Thorn grabs Damien and decides to give him a haircut, for the final proof that Damien is a no goodnick is a birthmark “666” on his head. Thorn is so damn good he immediately finds the mark, thus sparing Damien the indignity of being killed looking like William Shatner when the lights are out.

Mrs. Blaylock, who earlier promised Damien that she’d protect him, and promised Thorn with her eyes some good loving, now jumps on Thorn’s back like a, well like a crazed Baboon. Here is where we realize that Satan’s minions just aren’t very competent. First that damned dog is led into the basement and locked in, then the Evil Nanny decides that screaming and jumping a man who out weighs her by probably 200 pounds is a smart idea (I mean really, she didn’t think to have a gun? Or even a letter opener?)

Thorn makes short work of Blaylock, marking the most disappointing subplot of the film’s end.

Thorn now grabs Damien, throws him into his car, and races off to a Church (‘cause you can’t just kill the AntiChrist in a Dunkin Donuts or something). But remember, Thorn is a US Official and though he’s been running around with no Secret Service or guards in sight throughout most of the movie, NOW a British patrol car stationed outside his home sees a bloody Thorn race his car into the night and decides something is a bit off.

Thorn gets Damien into a church, up to the altar and is about to plunge the first knife into his heart when the cops rush in, tell him to stop, then (in the coolest scene in the movie) fire a slo-mo bullet, killing Thorn. The movie ends with Damien standing next to the President of the United States, no doubt ready to offer some advice on Middle East Policy. The Final scene is Damien turning to you the viewer and giving you a cheeky grin. I mean an eeeevil grin. Roll Credits.

So what have we learned?

Lesson #1: Orphans are not natural and will eventually turn on their parents. Believe it.

Lesson #2 By the mid 1970’s, the 1960’s were over.

This movie was released just as the Hippy kids who rebelled against their parents in the mid 60’s had kids of about Damien’s age. This movie exploits their deep seated anxiety caused by a) getting old and not being teenagers forever b) having kids of their own who would probably rebel and act up and smoke pot and drop out of school and not obey.

Lesson #3 Sincerely believing Christians are crazed fanatics who will gleefully murder children if they believe them to be evil. I mean seriously, it’s like Bill Mahr wrote this script.

Lesson #4 Satan and his minions are incompetent. The Crazy Priest gets his message to Thorn then gets killed. Hippy Reporter’s death convinces Thorn that the whole crazy story is true, The dog can’t even detect a live human being just feet away but like a dumbass goes into the basement to look for him, and Mrs. Blaylock is all bark and little bite. Of course, one could argue that all of these things are meant to happen the way they do so Damien can spend some quality time at the White House.

Lesson #5 A great cast and crew can make the most outlandish plot entertaining and believable. Gregory Peck sells this film. His portrayal of Thorn, his relationship with his wife, his dawning realization of what he really did by exchanging his dead son for a live ringer, and his decent into madness are all portrayed amazingly well. Ditto for Lee Remick ditto for Dave Warner, and Patrick Troughton shines in his brief appearance.

Richard Donner’s direction and William Goldsmith’s score complete the picture.

Damien: Omen II next!

Damien: Omen II (1978)

This film picks up 8 years after The Omen. Damien is now at the significant age of 13, significant, he is told, because it marks the passage from Boy to Man. And just like most if us, Damien is initiated into manhood by a series of violent murders.

This film also picks up and expands on the themes of Omen I, most notably the theme of Young Vs Old. Every Oldster in this film is a crazed fanatic, a doddering fool, or both. Most of the Young people (defined as less than 75 years old) are cold, ruthless and cruel.

Oh, and the Evil Dog is gone, replaced by Evil Crow. This shows the managerial acumen of The Desolate One. I can picture Satan sitting at the head of the table in the Boardroom of Hell, saying “look, we gave the dog a great chance and he blew it. Let’s give the Crow a shot”. This turns out to be a great move, because that crow kicks all kinds of ass in this film.

The story picks up back in Israel just after the events in The Omen. Bugehagan invites an old (OLD) friend to diner, and let’s drop the news that, contrary to what the papers say, Robert Thorn tried to murder his 5 year old son using 6 daggers that he, Bugenhagen, had given him. Now Bugenhagen insists that his friend deliver a letter and 6 more daggers to Damien’s new guardian, Richard Thorn. For some reason his friend is reluctant, so Bugenhagen insists they go to some old (OLD) ruins and look at some artwork that proves that Damien is the Antichrist. This is some piece of art, lemme tell you. But it’s overshadowed by a large statute of King Ghidorah with a drunken whore on his back, guzzling a goblet of Thunderbird. The two men are soon trapped by a cave-in, then suffocated by sand. See, in this film Satan’s got it together and doesn’t wait for people to deliver the bad news then kill them. By the way, it’s Evil Crow who somehow causes the cave-in, showing us from the get go that Birds of a Feather Do It Better.

Cut to 8 years later: we see Damien at 13, a likely looking lad with a Brit accent living in Chicago. Actually the accent is a dead give away, because as Star Wars (released the same year) tells us, British Accent = Empire = Evil.

Evil Crow’s next victim is Aunt Marion, another one of those damn Christians who hates Damien! Actually it’s not clear that she knows or suspects he is the Antichrist, she just reads the Bible a lot and hates him. At dinner she tells Richard Thorn that she”ll leave all her shares of the Thorn fortune to charity unless they separate Damien from the Thorn’s own son, Mark. Damien and Mark are thick as thieves, and the old biddy can’t stand it. Richard and his second wife (we are constantly reminded of this) tell her to fuck off, which she does.

Everyone in the Thorn family talks about how old, crazy and smelly Aunt Marion is, and that combined with her threat means she is set to be dispatched by the Crow. Crow doesn’t go in for theatrics: no public hangings here; the old lady just gets an Instant Heart Attack courtesy of Satan.

Meanwhile we see Mark and Damien at their military academy. The first shot of Damien in uniform, in formation with a bunch of other cadets, seems to show that he’s already getting away with, ahem, murder. See, he’s got these long 70’s sideburns while the other cadets have short hair cuts. Sadly, this visual cue is promptly discarded, as the rest of the film shows us equally long haired hippy Cadets.

Soon the cadets are introduced to their new boss, Sgt Neff, played by none other than Lance “Millenium” Henriksen.. Coincidence? Neff meets all his boys one by one: when he meets Damien he assures him that he’s there to protect him. But he’s no Mrs. Blaylock, that’s for sure. In fact he really doesn’t do anything other than glower and exchange Meaningful Glances with Paul Buher, a Thorn Corp Executive and fellow Satanist. Obviously Satan is ahead of his time in employing not very closeted gays.

Paul Buher has a plan for the future of Thorn Corp, by the way. “The future lies in Famine!” he exclaims. He wants to buy up farm land all around the world and refuse to feed anyone who gets uppity. As Evil Plans go this one has some flaws. Bill Atherton, another Exec and Old Fart, opposes this brilliant business plan, calling it immoral and illegal, and persuades Richard to nix the project. But don’t worry, Evil Crow is on the case.

Another birthday party, another horrible death. This time it’s Mark’s B-day and a bunch of the Thorn’s friends ( probably bused in from somewhere for the day) and Thorn Execs and Flunkies are out on a frozen lake playing hockey. Guess who falls into a hole in the ice that conveniently opens up? Yep, the Old Fart, Bill Atherton, in one of the best deaths of the series, plunges into the icy waters, and is pulled by the current away from rescue. But the lake is frozen over with ice, see? So everyone can see the poor old (Old) guy desperately trying to break through the ice, while getting pulled by the current. Finally they lose him forever, and now Paul Buher takes over. Guess what his first move will be?

Oh, FYI there is no crazy priest in this movie, but there is a crazy reporter. Joan Hart has some relation to the journalist played by David Warner in the first film (I guess it’s a whole family of journalists). She is very religious, which of course means she’s bugfuck crazy and convinced that Damien must be killed asap. She doesn’t get very far, thanks to Evil Crow.

Her death is an example of Evil Physics at work. After her car stalls out and she gets out to walk to the nearest farm, the Crow divebombs her ass and un does her screaming tight bun, letting her lovely auburn hair fly in the wind. Then he pecks the fuck out of her eyes. Then she stumbles onto the highway where she’s run down by a semi. Although the truck hits her at ground level at 100 miles an hour (that driver wasn’t going to stop for no one), somehow her body instantly back flips over the cab and bounces off the container with a big ole Splat! Exit Joan.

There are some other good kills in this film that follow the basic pattern of: guy finds something weird or evil is going on, gets the chop. There is a great elevator death, and Thorns’ pet Archeologist, who digs up Bugenhagen , the Statue of the Whore of Babylon and King Ghidorah, and the wall that shows the Anitchrist,gets a train car to the crotch.

That wall by the way was painted by a medieval monk who had a vision of Satan, and you can bet he was an old fart too. But the painting is said to show the Antichrist’s rise and fall, leading to two important questions never addressed in this series:

1)Why the fuck would you be a Satanist if you know he’s going to fall in the end? I mean I’m all for rooting for the underdog, but come on
2)Why can’t the Antichrist take one look at that wall and prevent his own downfall?

Ah well. There is a lot more plot and a nice surprise (I can’t really say it is a twist because it plays to that Young/Evil vs. Old/Good but Stupid thing in an obvious way) at the very end of the movie. But I do want to highlight one subplot that makes this a great entry in the series:

So Damien and Mark have been best buds since Damien moved in. But all it takes is one overheard conversation (Mark is listening in when the Pet Archeologist, having read Bugenhagen’s letter and seen the Wall, tries to convince Thorn that his adopted son is really the Devil’s son and needs a full knife set implanted in his chest) and Mark turns on him. Sure, Mark’s seen Damien use his Evil Powers (to bewilder a school bully for example) too, but why not assume Damien is a mutant or from Krypton or something?

Soon Damien is also made aware of his true identity, by non other than Neff (and Buher too). There’s a great scene where Damien runs out to the end of a frozen pier and screams “Why?! Why me?!”. Later Damien confronts Mark, who rejects him THREE TIMES! Damien takes that step into manhood the only way a son of Satan can.

What have we learned?

1)Reading a letter and viewing one painting, combined with a literal reading of the Book of Revelations (no one in this series seems to have read anything about “thou shalt not kill”) will turn any sane rational person into a raving lunatic.
2)Between The Omen and Omen II Satan has gotten an MBA, learning about managerial excellence and good business practices.
3)Up until the last part of Omen II, Damien is actually a sympathetic character. His treatment of Mark is the thing that makes us realize that, yeah, the apple didn’t fall from the tree after all.
4)I know I didn’t even call out William Holden or Lee Grants performances in my synopsis. They both do a fine job and it’s a credit to this series that they really did get some great leading actors. I’d also call out Robert Foxworth as Buher and Jonathan Scott-Taylor is great as Damien (there are some great scenes of Scott-Taylor looking evilly at the camera). After this film, the acting slides quickly downhill.
5)These movies are more entertaining than any cheesy movies about the rise of the Antichrist have a right to be

The Final Conflict (Omen III) (1981)

You know all those folk stories where some dude makes a deal with the Devil, but the Devil doesn’t quite deliver as promised? Well, The Final Conflict posits that the Devil learned that trick from God!

See, Revelations clearly states that the Antichrist gets 7 years to rule the world, do evil deeds, get dogs and cats living together etc. Then Jesus comes back in triumph, puts down the AntiChrist and ushers in a new Millennium.

But at the beginning of Final Conflict, Damien Thorn tells his chief aid that those 7 years constitute the time he’s been CEO of Thorn Industries. Yes, that’s right. The AntiChrist’s rule on earth really comes down to 7 Annual Board meetings, Dinners with overcooked chicken, and only the occasional skullduggery. What a rip!

(I guess the Apocalypse had to be toned down due to budget considerations)

In fact, Damien’s big moves in this film are 1) getting to be appointed Ambassador to the Court of St James without giving up his CEO Position (good thing Dick Cheney never saw this film!) 2) getting appointed head of the United Nations Youth Council (yawn). OK, Ok, he does get to perform two major acts of Evil, in fact the biggest evil doings in any of the films. His agents blow up the Aswan Dam and pin it on Israel (though Damien tells the President that the Nambla Liberation Front is truly responsible), and he decides on a spate of baby killing in England.

Why the baby killings? Because Damien (and the film) have decided that Revelations is passé, and instead use a never heard-of-before-this-film apocryphal book of the Bible (The Book of Hebron or BabaBooey I think). According to this Book, there will be a miraculous alignment of stars that will point out exactly where the All New Baby Jesus will be born, and preliminary projections show it will be in England.

Now, I am no Bible scholar, but I do not recall any portrayal of the Second Coming of Jesus that includes a birth. He’s always coming back with a sword, as a King, etc. But whatever, it’s a movie, right?

Anyway the alignment happens: 4 stars just up and leave their normal positions (we see an Astronomer placing three sets of transparent photos on top of each other to show the stars accelerating over decades, but really speeding up over the previous few months. This gets maybe one headline in the paper, it’s never referenced again, and it seems the only people who care about four celestial object moving at faster than light speeds are this one Astronomer and 7 monks.

These monks knew that half burnt Priest from Omen I. (Spileto I think). Though the late Father could not speak I guess he spent years scrawling out messages in crayon to the rest of the monks, and of course they believe every word (people are really, really credulous in these movies). The monks recover the 7 (not 6 as in the first two films) Daggers that can kill Damien, and make off to England like the Seven Samurai to defend the Faith.

Well, the first attempt does not go too well. A monk infiltrates a TV studio where Thorn is being interviewed, trips off a catwalk above the studio floor, gets tangled up in cables so he swings into some electrical equipments that promptly explodes, then swings around in fire for a while. Note that no intervention by Damien, his followers, evil animals or the Devil is needed. The dumb ass trips!

By the way, the most effective Evil Animal in the series (the Crow) is gone, replaced by a new species of Evil Dog. This time around the Dog gets it right. He gets two kills in this movie: one the US Ambassador to the UK (he needs to go so Damien can take his place) and later he convinces the wife of Damien’s chief acolyte to kill her baby (the birth happened during the window of time that New Jesus was born), and then the acolyte. That last is pretty gruesome event. The Evil Dog puts a whammy on the wife, staring into her eyes through the window. The wife then looks at her new born son in his crib, and sees a burnt baby swiveling his head to stare at her! Creepy! She then moves in a trance to pick up a hot steam iron, and dispatches baby and husband. This is the first and only time we get an indication that the victims of Thorn are seeing visions: they always act like they are under mind control. Which in turn brings up a lot of questions about Free Will. But, whatever…

A word on that Chief Acolyte. He’s the most interesting character in the movie, because though he’s been working for Damien for years and probably seen all kinds of special effects, you get the sense that he doesn’t quite believe that Damien is the AntiChrist. There is no explicit dialogue to prove this assertion; it’s just how the actor reads his lines. I find that weird. Of course, the apostles witnesses miracles over many months, and as soon as Jesus was killed they immediately expressed doubts about his divinity too, so…

There are a few sequences where Damien kills of all but one of the remaining monks which are pretty cool. Also we see a scene where Damien speaks to a huge crowd of Devil Worshippers, telling him about his sudden dislike of babies.

Oh, and Damien gets involved with a reporter with Big 80’s Hair and her son. She is having a good love making session with Damien, until the later suddenly stops and realizes that, hey, he’s the Devil’s Son, at which point he flips her around and fucks her up the ass (this may be the first instance in film of something Devin pointed out in a recent Podcast: when a movie character “turns Dark” he fucks his girlfriend up the ass).

So, Damien and his followers kill a lot of babies, but LOL they miss the one Baby they are really looking for. We never learn who the lucky parents of the New Baby Jesus are. In fact we never actually see a Baby version of Jesus at all! Damien confronts the final Monk in a ruined Church, and is confronted in turn by a fully adult, Giant Glowing Jesus. “You haven’t won anything” Damien says petulantly, and that’s it.

The final scene of the film is of Jesus walking up to the Reporter Woman cradling her dead (?) 12 year old son in his arms (yeah I skipped that subplot, go rent the movie if you want to find out what happens)

What have we learned?

1)While this movie is very entertaining, it’s completely empty and vapid. The first two movies really use the idea that Revelations will be Coming True Soon. Using a fake book of the Bible along with stars zooming around does not have the same resonance.
2)Sam Neil sustains this film on his capable shoulders. Unlike the previous films, Neil is pretty much on his own acting wise. I blame the script; there just isn’t much for anyone to do except for Damien.
3)In this film we get to hear Damien’s point of view about Jesus and Christianity. Mostly it’s not too interesting except for one line where Damien states that Jesus has had the last 2,000 years to rule Mankind and now it’s his turn. What? We’ve really been living under Jesus all this time?
4)Damien states that every day that New Baby Jesus lives his (Damien’s ) powers will grow weaker. This is a Manichean view; that the forces of Good and Evil are equally matched and in some way depend on each other.
5)Even though Damien is the Son of Satan, he has a chapel with a big statue of Jesus in his home (no altar though). He likes to go to this chapel at night and berate the statue about what a bad ass he is how things will be different when he’s in charge blah blah blah. This is an interesting idea, Damien as a Job like figure, demanding an answer from God/Jesus but getting silence (even at the end Jesus doesn’t even say hello)
6)A lot of the underlying themes of the first two movies are mostly absent here. Apart from that Youth Council thing, and Damien bonding with the Reporter Chick’s son, there is no allusion to the Old=Bad and/or incompetent vs. Young=Cruel/smart/competent thing.
7)I bet you could parse out the demographics of the first two films thusly: people over 40, and people with young kids who cut their teeth in the mid 60’s. The third movie seems to appeal to people who liked the first two; there is no wider appeal to a broad based audience (in my opinion)
8)I know there was a made for TV sequel to this film where the devil is a little girl , but I’ve only seen 10 minutes of that one and it was so bad that I’ve stricken it from me memory. I leave it to my fellow Chewers to take up the mantle and write up the subsequent films!
9)Oh yes, the Soundtrack to this film is amazing

Hahaha no that is not in the first three films.