Bad/Awesome Flixxx Review: The Omen (1976)

"When the Jews return to Zion / And a comet rips the sky / And the Holy Roman Empire rises, / Then You and I must die. / From the eternal sea he rises, / Creating armies on either shore, / Turning man against his brother / 'Til man exists no more." - Father Brennan

"Wrong? What could be wrong with our child, Robert? We're the beautiful people, aren't we?" - Kathy Thorn

"The child is dead. He breathed for a moment. Then he breathed no more. The child is dead. Dead. The child is dead." - Father Spilleto

Richard Donner! Director of the first SUPERMAN (the second one too if they hadn't have fucked him over), THE GOONIES, and the first couple LETHAL WEAPONs brings us this tale of a terribly evil little boy that prophesy says will bring about the destruction of the world. A scary 70s flick with Gregory Peck, Roy Boyd (from THE WICKER MAN), and Lee Remick in THE OMEN!!!

A child dies born to the wife of the newly elected US ambassador to Great Britain. He's stationed in Rome and this old preacher somehow convinces Thorn (the dude) to take another newborn white baby whose mother had just died. He reluctantly does so thinking that it will be better for his wife if she never knows that her baby died. 
Fast forward to his fifth birthday party and everyone is having a good time until this big black dog shows up. It catches eyes with Damien (the baby)'s nanny and she goes upstairs and proclaims to the whole party, "It's all for you Damien, it's all for you." and hangs herself out the fucking window. Kids start screaming, a clown hides a kid's eyes, it's a mess. So then this other nanny shows up out of nowhere bullshitting them that "the agency" sent her over after they read about the incident in the paper. And she takes in the big scary growling dog as a pet. 
They try to take Damien to church and he has an absolute fucking freakout. Same thing at the zoo, the baboons jump all over the car trying to smash in the windows to get to him, but none of the other animals will have anything to do with him. On a business trip, a preacher comes and warns Thorn that his son is evil and may not be human and gets thrown out. But he keeps showing up telling Thorn that his wife is preggers and that Damien will never let the child be born. So the wife starts acting weird, and says she's pregnant but wants an abortion. Thorn says no way, because he doesn't want to believe the prophesy. So he meets with the preacher again who tells him that he's gotta kill his son, who isn't really his son anyway. And he tells him the only one who can help him. And then that preacher gets killed. And then Damien runs into his mother while she's hanging something and she falls over a railing and loses the baby. Thorn goes on a trip with this photographer who thinks his pics predict the deaths associated with Damien to find out who Damien's mother really was. The photog has a vested interest since his camera caught his reflection in a mirror revealing that he would die soon also. 
They visit the hospital where Damien was born. Then they go to a monastery to visit the monk who performed the surgery. Then they go dig up the graves of the mother (a jackal) and Thorn's real son, who had his head bashed in so that the Antichrist would be placed into a family of wealth. Then a bunch of dogs chase them outta there. Then they go see this dude Bukenhagen who gives them the special knives to kill the kid with. Thorn freaks and throws them away saying he'll never do it. The photog goes to retrieve them and is decapitated. Then Thorn learns that his wife was thrown out of the hospital window like 20 stories up by the maid. So Thorn freaks and goes and shaves his kid's head to see if he has the mark of the beast on his gourd. YUP. So he goes to do the deed with the 7 daggers of Megiddo, but is shot to death by the cops who frown on child murder. Then we see the funeral and Damien is standing with his new parents, the president of the US and um... the first lady. Should you? Why not? Should I watch the sequels? Probably! I think I'll do a big sequel fest coming up soon. 

Thursday, April 25, 2013