“Look at me Damien. It’s all for you!”
From its opening piano/chanting in the
haunting score by Jerry Goldsmith and the incredible image of a child whose
shadow is an upside down cross, you know you are in for something, so you keep
watching.
The 1976
horror masterpiece “The Omen” directed by Richard Donner who would later give
us “Superman: The Movie”, “The Goonies” and the Lethal Weapon series first put
us at the beginning of the end with the birth of the antichrist. Right from the get go, you know it’s gonna be
bad when a priest flat out tells Gregory Peck’s (To Kill a Mockingbird)
character Robert Thorn to lie to his wife Kathy played by Lee Remick. And it’s such a huge lie, of course that can’t
go wrong at all. Thorn is an U. S. ambassador
who moves his family from Rome where his child is born to London, when it only
takes ten minutes in to see things get really, really creepy. When the nanny of their child Damien is
dispatched in a memorable scene.
So memorable
in fact this was the first scene described to me by my cousin who was allowed to
watch horror movies before me. He showed
me a book that had the images of the making of “The Omen” and showed the nanny
scene. We looked through the book to see
any other grizzly images, and did, but it didn’t ruin my viewing of it when I
finally did see the film. Interesting
side note on the previous side note, that book about the making of the movie we
were looking at, was at a used book sale on the grounds of a church.
What I
noticed watching the film now as a film lover is that it’s truly an amazing picture. Not just scary, or gruesome, and there’s no
shortage of that, but the way it was shot by Donner, like someone or something
always peeking in at odd angles, or through gates and pillars from a
distance. And the almost inhuman close-ups
which take up half the screen and wide shots of characters eyes, you can almost
see their souls. Also being that all the
effects were done practically makes the movie feel even more impressive. People talk about the shot of one character
falling from a second story, which is a little dated, but the crazy baboons,
fleeing giraffes, stalking dogs, and the still amazing decapitation scene that
is one of the best looking and original kills ever put to screen cements this
as one of my favorite films.
As I said
before it’s not just well done horror, but as a film it hits all the right
notes, the build-up really works and makes sense as it goes along. One thing leads to another and another as
Peck’s character is truly the average man put in an extraordinary
situation. I mean this movie takes Atticus
Finch to the brink where he eventually takes an ancient ice pick to a
child. And you believe it. That is where great stories come from, and
this is a story that has been interpreted albeit in a fantastic way by the most
famous narrative, the Bible.
My cousin
would later tell me about the sequels which sounded better as he told them than
they actually were when I saw them. Now they
feel like a pre-curser to the Final Destination series. And I honestly never bothered with the 2006
remake. But in ’76 filmmakers really
knew how to make movies, and they knew how to give you the feeling of true
terror. Check out “The Omen” again, and
if you’ve never seen it, watch it alone at night, and try not to get un-nerved
by the chanting and whispering of the voices as dogs stalk the hallways, in the
dark.
--Robert L. Castillo
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