The Omen
The Omen is a
1976 suspense/horror film directed by
Richard Donner and starring
Gregory Peck,
Lee Remick,
David Warner,
Harvey Stephens,
Billie Whitelaw,
Patrick Troughton, Martin Benson, and
Leo McKern.
The premise of
The Omen comes from the
end times prophecies of
Christianity. The story tells of the childhood of
Damien Thorn, who was switched at birth with the murdered child of a wealthy American diplomat. Damien's family is unaware that he is actually the offspring of
Satan and destined to become the
Antichrist.
The movie followed at the tail end of a cycle of 'demonic child' films such as
Rosemary's Baby,
I Don't Want To Live,
To The Devil A Daughter, and most notably
The Exorcist, and was itself followed by sequels (see below) and a number of copycat films such as the Italian-made
Kirk Douglas movie
Holocaust 2000. As a rule of thumb, the children concerned get older as the cycle continues, from the newborn of 'Rosemary' to the teens of such films as
Carrie and
The Fury.A new version,
The Omen, was released on
June 6,
2006 (6/6/06).
Curse
The Omen was characterized by the chillingly effective use of
symbolism, such as the birthmark of the number
666 on Damien's scalp, the effective use of crucifixes and statuary for foreshadowing, and the wallpapering of a room with pages from a
Bible to ward off evil spirits.
The production of The Omen was plagued with a series of "curses" to which the crew suggested were perhaps
supernatural forces trying to prevent the filming of the
movie. Instances include:
*The plane for scriptwriter David Seltzer was struck by lightning
*Richard Donner's hotel was bombed by the
Provisional IRA *Gregory Peck canceled a flight to Israel, only for the plane he'd chartered to crash, killing all on board (a group of Japanese businessmen)
*A warden at the safari park used in the "crazy baboon" scene was attacked and killed by a tiger the day after the crew left
*On the first day of shooting, the principal members of the crew survived a head-on car crash.
*The man who choreographed the beheading scene was involved in a car crash with another vehicle. His girlfriend in the passenger seat was cut in half by the steering wheel from the other car. This happened 66.6 km from a town called
Ommen in
The Netherlands.
Writing
Producer
Harvey Bernhard hired
screenwriter David Seltzer to create a story around that idea. Seltzer created a mild controversy when the film was released by saying that he wrote it "only for the money." Nevertheless, he also wrote the book and wrote the similar demonic
horror film The Eighteenth Angel and speaks affectionately about the film on the 2001 DVD release.
Cast
Music
An original score for the film was composed by
Jerry Goldsmith, for which he received the only
Oscar of his long career. The score features a strong
choral segment, with a foreboding
Latin chant. The refrain to the chant is, "Sanguis bebimus, corpus edimus" (Latin, "We drink the blood, we eat the flesh"), interspersed with cries of "Ave Satani!" (Latin, "Hail, Satan!"). Aside from the choral work, the score includes lyrical themes portraying the pleasant home life of the Thorn family, which are contrasted with the more disturbing scenes of the family's confrontation with evil.
The movie boasted one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema in which a character willingly and joyfully hanged herself at a birthday party attended by young children. It also features a particularly disturbing decapitation scene, one of mainstream Hollywood's first. "If there were a special
Madame Defarge Humanitarian Award for best decapitation," wrote
Kim Newman in
Nightmare Movies (1988), "this lingering, slow-motion sequence would get my vote."
Influence
*Damien Thorn appeared as a character in the
South Park episode "Damien", and had a cameo in "Professor Chaos". Also, the episode
Tsst ends in a similar fashion to the film.
*"Damien" is a song written by the American metal band
Iced Earth off of their 2001
Horror Show album. The lyrics of the song include references and direct quotations from the
Omen series.
* The popular British sitcom
Only Fools & Horses features a recurring joke in which
Rodney Trotter fears that his nephew is the anti-Christ (because he is 'Son of Del'). The boy's name is Damian, and Omen-like music (usually the
Carmina Burana) often plays whenever Rodney sees him.
*The opening musical sequence for
The Omen, which features a grimly-singing Catholic chorus and tolling bells, was sped up slightly and used as background music in the anime
Hellsing. This shortened (roughly 45 seconds long) version of the opening can be found on the tenth track of the soundtrack titled
Raid.
*The novel
Good Omens by
Terry Pratchett and
Neil Gaiman satirizes many aspects of the movie.
*Rapstar
DMX has a song titled Damien on his debut album "It's Dark and Hell is Hot". On his second album "Flesh of my Flesh, Blood of my Blood" he has a track titled "The Omen" which features the controversial artist
Marilyn Manson. The final in the series of songs is on his album "The Great Depression" with the song titled Damien III.
*An American study of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (
ADHD) carried out by the
Duke University School of Medicine in the 1990s reported that boys called Damien were six times more likely to suffer from the disorder than average.
*Four-year-old
Harvey Stephens got the role of Damien after director
Richard Donner urged him to beat Donner up. Stephens did just that, even punching Donner in the
testicles (this according to Donner during an
AMC interview).
*Harvey Stephens -- the "original" Damien makes a return to the big screen in the 2006 Omen remake as a reporter.
*The lightning rod that kills Father Brennan was originally supposed to impact through his head and out his backside, but the effect was impossible to achieve with special effects technology of the time.
*Jennings was originally meant to be killed by a pane of glass dangling from a crane
above his head. When he bent down to pick up the knives, the glass would drop and
decapitate him.
Special effects supervisor
John Richardson tried several times to achieve the effect, but each time the glass leveled and landed horizontally. Richardson suggested the glass could fly off the back of a truck instead. The original version of the scene appears in the novel.
*To make the baboons attack the car in the Windsor Zoo park scene, an official from the zoo was in the backseat of the car with a baby baboon, which made all the baboons outside go crazy.
Lee Remick's terror as the baboons attack the car was real.
The Omen spawned several sequels and a remake.
Sequels
Damien: Omen II (
1978)
Omen III: The Final Conflict (
1981)
Omen IV: The Awakening (
1991, made-for-TV).
Remake(s)
The Omen (
2006 remake of
The Omen).
* David Seltzer,
The Omen. (Futura, 1976).
* Joseph Howard,
Damien: Omen II. (Futura, 1978).
* Gordon McGill,
Omen III: The Final Conflict. (Futura, 1980).
* Gordon McGill,
Omen IV: Armageddon. (Futura, 1983)
* Gordon McGill,
Omen V: The Abomination. (Futura, 1985).
Both the book and the movie were written by David Seltzer. The book preceded the movie by two weeks as an effective marketing gimmick. For the book, Seltzer took liberties with his own material, changing details (such as character names) and often augmenting plot points. The second and third novels were novelizations of their respective movies, and reflected movie continuity, more or less.
The fourth novel,
Omen IV: Armageddon was entirely unrelated to the fourth movie, but continued the story of Omen III. Its premise is based on the one-night stand between Damien Thorn and Kate Reynolds in Omen III. This affair included an act of sodomy, and thence Kate gave the (rectal) "birth" of another diabolical entity called "the abomination" (presumably after the "abomination of desolation" from the book of Daniel) in Omen IV. This novel attempted to patch one of the Omen series' more glaring plot-holes, namely the question of whether the Antichrist could be slain by one of the seven "daggers of Megiddo" (which occurred in Omen III) or only by all of them (as stated in the first book and movie). The solution reached was that one dagger could kill Damien's physical body, but not his soul.
This story was continued in the fifth novel,
Omen V: The Abomination, which resulted in the death of this character.
The name "Damien" sounds vaguely like the English "demon," but is not at all etymologically related. Damien is the French form of the English name Damian (Latin
Damianus), popular as the name of a martyred Christian saint of the third century (see
Sts. Cosmas and Damian). Another prominent Damien was
Father Damien of Hawaii, who died while establishing leper colonies there â€" a saintly rather than demonic figure. Damien is also the first name of Father Karras in
The Exorcist.
The success of the
Omen series inspired
Marvel Comics to revive the
Son of Satan series, whose eponymous hero has the civilian name of
Daimon Hellstrom. Hellstrom, despite his ancestry, wielded his pitchfork for the side of good â€" at least until the end of his series, and a revival under the slightly-altered name of
Hellstorm. Marvel Comics reportedly promised not to revive the "Son of Satan" name, in response to pressure from Christians concerned about glorifying Satanism. However, a new Hellstrom limited series has been announced for the Marvel
MAX line of adult comics. [
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*
The Omen Trailer --
Videohitz*
The Omen Collector's Edition
DVD Review at
Dread Central
