At some point, I definitely intend to
see the full Omen series. (Excluding the made-for-TV fourth
film and the remake). I’ve heard that while the later films aren’t
as good as the original, the series does manage to avert sequelitis
and produce acceptable follow-ups to the first film. However, I
can’t say that as more than secondhand information until I’ve
actually seen the entire trilogy.
While I do think this movie is good, I
believe that it’s far from great. And I think it sadly fails to
properly utilize its own premise. The film humanizes the
Anti-Christ, and then fails to do anything with that humanization.
Instead, the reluctance to kill an apparently innocent child is
simply a matter of distaste, without anyone really questioning the
morality of murdering someone whose only crime was to draw the
short-straw and be Heaven’s enemy through no choice of his own.
Gregory Peck stars as Robert Thorn, the
American Ambassador to England whose son dies shortly after birth.
Not wanting his wife (Lee Remick) to suffer the trauma of losing a
son, he secretly has the dead child switched out with an orphan whose
mother died giving birth to him and who has no other living
relatives. The child is given the name Damien. (Harvey Spencer
Stephens for most of the movie).
Strange things happen around Damien.
His first Nanny (Holly Palance) commits suicide at his birthday party
while visible to all of the children. She’s promptly replaced by a
new Nanny (Billie Whitelaw), who shows up without being called for
and secretly tells Damien that she’s there to “protect” him.
Damien begins screaming in fear when they come close to a church.
And most animals not under the direct control of the Devil seem to
fear or hate Damien.
The movie suffers from the rare problem
in Hollywood of actually being too subtle. Yes, strange things
happen around Damien, but it seems a bit of a leap to go directly to
declaring that he’s the Anti-Christ. Hell, if anything, I’d
assume that a hoard of angry baboons attacking my son meant he was
either haunted or hexed. But this to the conclusion that his son is
the Dark Messiah is exactly the leap that Robert makes when Father
Brennan (Patrick Troughton... yes, the Second Doctor...) shows up.
It takes a while for Robert to accept the idea. But once his wife
has an accident, resulting in a miscarriage (Damien’s fault only
because he was riding his tricycle and she tripped over him), he’s
fully prepared to kill his own son.
Also, anyone trying to make a serious
drama about the Anti-Christ should make at least some effort to get
some modicum of correct information about the theology. While I
don’t claim to be a theologian, I’m well aware that “Armageddon”
is derived from “Megiddo,” not the other way around. Also, I
think anyone with common sense should be able to figure out that if a
biblical passage rhymes in English, it’s more likely a product of
the writer’s imagination than of the Apostle John’s.
It’s truly amazing that a movie with
both Gregory Peck and Richard Donners’ names attached makes so many
missteps. This is supposedly the film Peck came out of retirement to
do, but his performance feels phoned in. He’s given a journalist
(David Warner) as a side-kick who annoys him for the first half of
the film before they team up. The journalist then proceeds to
contribute nothing that couldn’t have been achieved by other means.
The death of Father Brennan is accomplished by a purely supernatural
agent, and the death of Damien’s mother by the Satanic nurse.
Thus, the movie passes up both of these deaths as chances to
establish Damien as truly evil (if they wanted to go that route).
As for the movie being scary... most of
the scares come across as more fun and over-the-top. The one
exception, ironically, is the scene in which Robert finally attempts
to kill Damien. However, this just further highlights the problem
that I didn’t feel fear of this Anti-Christ, but instead,
felt fear for him. He’s dragged into a church by his crazed
father who wants to stab him to death, and then intentionally destroy
his soul.
Once again though, the movie isn’t
bad. It feels like a very schlocky B-movie, but not the classic that
it’s supposed to be. The movie has its scary moments, but the
whole thing just feels so illogical in it’s plotting that I have no
idea what the Director was going for. Watch it to be amused, not
frightened.
