Day 18: The Omen

18. The Omen (1976)
Dir: Richard Donner
Cast: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw

With the success of the controversial classic that was The Exorcist, Hollywood saw a new sub-genre developing in the world of horror that had struck a chord with audiences. This sub-genre has become known to some movie fans as "Christploitation" a film with religious themes portrayed in a horror styling. Thus the go ahead was given for director Richard Donner to make the 1976 film The Omen.

With an all star lead in acting legend Gregory Peck and a talented supporting cast, The Omen is a chilling story of a married American Diplomat couple Robert Thorn (Peck) and his wife Katherine (Remick) living in England with their quiet adopted young son Damien (Harvey Stephens). Everything seems to be normal at first until suddenly all the people around Robert begin to die in mysterious ways. Eventually with the help of a photographer Keith Jennings (Warner) Thorn finally comes to the shocking conclusion that his son is indeed the offspring of Satan and wont quit until his son is stopped.

Now of course The Omen is no where near as powerful or compelling as The Exorcist, but it's still a very thrilling and unsettling movie. Gregory Peck is marvelous as the conflicted father and the events that surround him are pretty creepy. The cinematography (Done by Gilbert Taylor who came out of retirement to do the film) and production value is quite good, but one of the most important factors of why this film feels so spook, is it's excellent score. A booming latin singing choir performing an excellent collection of pieces by composer legend Jerry Goldsmith. The theme to the movie is song called "Ave Satani" translated as "Hail Satan" which won Goldsmith an Oscar and may perhaps be the biggest highlight of his prestigious career. Either way it really sets the mood and makes this movie all so much scarier.



It seems interesting to me that a lot of the best horror movies of the 70s weren't always made by specifically horror genre directors. Brian De Palma had Carrie William Friedkin had The Exorcist and Donner The Omen which is a very effective spook fest done by a primarily adventure genre director. Either way this a great piece of scary moviemaking and worth a bit of peak if you want to see something good.

Fright Fact: The shot of Lee Remick falling to the floor was done by building the "floor" on a (vertical) wall and dollying an upright Remick backward towards it.

Horror Highlight: This scene is a definite spoiler in a key characters death, don't watch it if you want to be surprised the first time you see it... But god do I love this scene.