OVP: The Omen (1976)

Film: The Omen (1976)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw, Harvey Stephens

Director: Richard Donner

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Score*, Original Song-"Ave Satini")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

We've talked about this a lot through the years on this blog, but horror & Oscar rarely mix.  Only a handful (The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense) have competed for Best Picture, and only a couple of actors (Kathy Bates, Ruth Gordon, Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster) have won Oscars for acting in horror films.  This is despite the genre boasting a number of truly great performances, scripts, and especially scores.  It is insane that films like Halloween and Scream, whose scores are synonymous with the genre (and movies in general) didn't even get nominated for Oscars.  It also means that when one wins, it's a big deal.  The Omen is one of those wins, and in an even more bizarre twist, it was the only win that Jerry Goldsmith ever got.  Yes, Jerry Goldsmith, the maestro behind Planet of the Apes, Chinatown, and Alien won his only Oscar for a movie about a middle-aged couple who thinks they might be raising the antichrist.  All-of-this-is-to-say The Omen was a must-pick gap when I was selecting the movies for this year's horror lineup.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a wealthy couple Robert (Peck) and Katherine Thorn (Remick).  In the opening scenes, Katherine has just given birth to a son, one who has died during childbirth, and Robert is trying to figure out the best way to tell his wife.  He soon learns he doesn't have to-a priest offers up an abandoned baby for him to raise, and so instead of telling his wife he tells her the baby is in fact their own biological child.  But the child, Damien (Stephens), it turns out, is unusual.  Animals react oddly to him, and strange things happen when he's around, including someone killing themselves in the opening scenes of the movie.  The film progresses with Katherine finding herself tortured and injured by Damien, and Robert getting strange warnings about the child, eventually going on an investigation of sorts where he discovers that Damien is not just any kid-he is the son of the devil, and has come to destroy the world as foretold in the Book of Revelation.  Before the end of the film, Katherine & Robert are both dead, and Damien is living with the President of the United States...where he can easily take over power and control of the world.

I had never seen The Omen, at least not fully through, but it's one of those movies that is so enmeshed in pop culture it's hard to not know where it's going.  It's been parodied repeatedly (off-the-top of my head I can think of American Dad!, but I know there are others), and the name Damien is shorthand for "evil" even more than Hannibal, Freddie, & Chucky are at this point.  The film weirdly functions as a mystery more than a horror, one that surely played better when you didn't know what was about to happen.  Peck, in the twilight of his stardom, is oblivious to what's obvious to the audience, but he is a good stooge, and the ending (where he dies rather than Damien, which wasn't the original choice of the director who wanted them both to perish) makes the film considerably better.

The Oscar nominations are unusual.  Goldsmith's score is great.  This isn't his best score (that would be Chinatown) but it would've been a crime had he never won one, and I love that he got it for quality work (it's eerie), and that a horror film managed to pull off this victory.  The song nomination, though, is so strange.  The song itself is fine, but it's the subject matter that is crazier.  In 1976, while tunes by Barbra Streisand & Tom Jones were up for AMPAS approval, somehow these two pop icons were up against a song that was literally an ode to Satan.  The 1970's, man...I wish we could get back to the days that Oscar was willing to go out there with his nominations.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream