"An innocent face." "A heart of darkness." "And a simple name that inspires terror." "Damien!" "It's all for you!" "Ripped from the pages of the Bible," "The Omen inspired a legacy that spanned both film and television." "It struck fear in the hearts of the faithful..." "This is not a human child." "...and forced sceptics to question their beliefs." "I stand before you in the name of the one true god." "But the Omen films almost never happened at all." "Each film was plagued by mishap and misfortune, and rumours of an Omen curse quickly became Hollywood legend." "In the beginning, God said, "Let there be light."" "Thus begins the unforgettable adventure of man." "From the beginning, film makers have looked to the Bible for inspiration." "For more than half a century, stories of triumph and faith have illuminated the silver screen." "But as the 1960s counterculture went mainstream," "Hollywood became intrigued by another the dark tales of Satan." "There's a lot to be mined in the Bible, and I think, as a book, there's a reason it's a bestseller." "It's fascinated people since the time it was written." "It's inspiring, it's scary, it's consoling and it's forewarning." "In 1968, director Roman Polanski released Rosemary's Baby, the tale of a suburban housewife who conceives the devil's son." "Audiences were shocked by the story's simple premise and flocked to see the film." "I suppose it would scare Christians to think that these things are happening and they don't know about them." "These were just, you know, the people next door." "The nice little old lady that lives in the apartment next door." "Who knows what they do behind closed doors'?" "Three years later, in 1971," "William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist was published," "A story about demons in our midst, the novel stayed on the bestseller list for over 60 weeks." "Released in 1973, the film version of the story terrified moviegoers with its tale of a little girl inhabited by deadly demons." "The Exorcist became a bona fide blockbuster and the film earned over $100 million in its first theatrical release." "Ironically, The Exorcist's popularity coincided with a growing interest in Christianity and religious fundamentalism." "You know, the hippy generation, a lot of them came to Christ, and as they began to look at the Scriptures, they saw these prophecies." "Contained in the Bible's Book of Revelation were prophecies written by one of Jesus' Apostles that offered grim predictions about the end of the world." "The last three and a half years is going to be, literally, hell on earth." "A time of judgment, a time when the Antichrist turns against God's people and when he thinks that he can, in essence, defeat God." "Satan is using him to try to defeat God's plan." "The Book of Revelation is an unveiling by God to the Apostle John about future events that are going to happen." "For example, Israel, the people of Israel, didn't inhabit their land for nearly 2,000 years." "Yet the prophecies in Revelation that were written in about 90 AD would make no sense, apart from Israel being in their land where they could at least rebuild their temple." "The 1970s saw several of these biblical prophecies come true, including earthquakes, floods and famines." "The decade also saw Satanism go mainstream with the success of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible." "First published in 1969, sales of the book continued to grow throughout the 1970s." "The idea that this man, Anton LaVey, or this group of people, would step forward and finally give the devil his due probably frightened a lot of people." "The combination of prophecies come true and the sudden growth of Satanic cults caused many wayward Christians to return to the Church." "For the first time in over 30 years, Bible sales in America doubled." "One of these newly devout Christians was an advertising executive named Robert Munger." "Munger believed in the prophecies of the Book of Revelation." "Everything that God has, the devil tries to counterfeit." "For example," "God sent his son Jesus Christ as the Messiah for the Jewish people and the entire world as well." "So the devil is gonna send his son." "He'll be the Antichrist." "But what if the Antichrist was already here, but he was just a little kid and nobody knew who he was'?" "Munger thought the idea of the devil coming to earth in the form of a baby would make a great film." "In 1974, he contacted his friend, film producer Harvey Bernhard, and within a year, the Omen legacy was born." "Harvey Bernhard began his career during the early days of Las Vegas by promoting shows on the city's fledgling Vegas Strip." "After making a name for himself in Nevada, he headed for Hollywood where, in the early 1970s, he produced two successful blaxploitation films," "The Mack, and Thomasine  Bushrod." "Although Bernhard had never made a horror movie, he was intrigued by Robert Munger's idea." "He told me about the Antichrist." ""What if he came back as a little boy?"" "I said, "Pardon me, Bob." "I gotta run."" "I wrote 15 pages." "With an outline for the story in hand," "Bernhard sought out a screenwriter." "But several, including a relative unknown named David Seltzer, turned him down." "I turned him down." "I did not want to do a horror film." "And then I realised that I'd never read the Bible." "So this would be an opportunity to really dive into the Bible and look for a story." "He delivered it, I think, in six weeks." "And it was sent to every studio in town." "They said it was too frightening." "So I had nothing." "Eventually, Bernhard enlisted the help of former agent turned producer, Mace Neufeld." "With Neufeld's help, the script, now called The Anti-Christ, was optioned by Warner Bros in the fall of 1974." "We made a deal with Warners and worked for about a year trying to polish the screenplay, cast it." "There was a director attached at Warners." "But Warner Bros was also developing a sequel to its 1973 hit," "The Exorcist." "Fearing that The Anti-Christ's religious themes were too similar," "Warner Bros put the film on hold." "We had a clause in the contract that said that if Warner Bros didn't start it in one year, we got the picture back." "With two days left before Warner Bros' option on The Anti-Christ expired," "Neufeld sent the script to Richard Donner." "Donner was a veteran director of hit television shows like Get Smart, Kojak, and The Six Million Dollar Man." "He was now looking to make the switch to feature films." "They said, "There's a project called The Anti-Christ, it's been at every studio in town and it's been turned down, rejected."" ""It's at Warners and they're gonna drop it Monday."" "I said, "What are you calling me for?" He said, "I think it's a good script."" "So he sent it over to my house and I read it." "Donner was so captivated by the script, he immediately called Alan Ladd Jr." "Ladd was Donner's friend and former agent, but, most importantly, Ladd was the head of production at 20th Century Fox." "I said, "I just read this great script." "The potential's all there."" ""Warners is putting it in turnaround on Monday."" ""Fox even dropped it." "But now I'm bringing it back to you."" "He said, "Why?" I said, "I just think the potential's phenomenal."" "He said, "OK, I'll try and read it." I said, "No, no, you gotta read it."" "I started to read the script." "I thought the story was good and the devil thing was a very interesting concept." "The devil's always good to deal with." "He did OK in The Exorcist." "But Ladd still had some reservations about the script's over-the-top satanic imagery." "He said, "There are obvious things."" "I said, "We eliminate them."" "It had cloven hoofs, it had devil gods, it had covens, it was very heavy-handed." "We wanted to make it like a coincidence in somebody's life." "He said, "if you can do that, it's sold."" "David Seltzer went to work addressing the concerns of Donner and Ladd." "Dick said to me, "There must be nothing in this movie" ""that you can't believe is actual."" ""The whole force of this movie" ""is going to be the critical mass of a man's paranoia" ""coming to be realised as actual."" ""And every single event, every single death, could be seen as the kind of freak accident that could occur in the world."" "The new draft The Birthmark." "But a daunting problem remained:" "a major star was needed in order to pull in an audience for what was essentially a horror film." "Charlton Heston turned down the lead role of Robert Thorn." "So did Roy Scheider and William Holden." "The film makers next set their sights on" "Academy Award-winning actor, Gregory Peck." "Peck hadn't been in front of a camera for nearly three years and was looking for an appropriate project." "But a personal tragedy almost kept the actor from receiving the script at all." "Gregory Peck's son had just committed suicide, and we had talked about it and said:" ""This is distasteful to even think of sending him the script."" "The original ending was he kills the child." "We thought, "Isn't it terribly distasteful to send a man whose child has just committed suicide a picture about a man who ultimately in the final reel kills his son?"" "And the agent said, "No, no." "Just send it to him."" "So we sent it to him and Greg came back and said, "Yeah, I want to do it."" "It validated it." "It raised the level tenfold when Peck went on." "And then, when Peck was on, Lee Remick was soon to follow." "Between the two of them, that really gave it some class." "The little horror film was now elevated to A-movie status as the movie's cast was rounded out by veteran actors like" "Leo McKern, David Warner, Martin Benson and Billie Whitelaw." "But the most important role, that of the Antichrist, Damien Thorn, would prove to be the most difficult of all the roles to cast." "In the fall of 1975, the cast and crew of The Birthmark gathered at Pinewood Studios in England to begin preproduction." "20th Century Fox had budgeted the film at a modest $2.8 million, but before they could begin shooting, the filmmakers had to find a boy capable of bringing the young Antichrist to life." "We looked all over, went to every juvenile casting group, we even went to the States, because if that kid didn't work for you, you didn't have a movie." "We interviewed four kids every ten minutes for two days." "Harvey Stephens was a Cockney, blond-haired, green-eyed, and I liked him." "I really did like him." "Dick didn't like him." "Little Harvey came in and we talked for a little bit." "He was a tough little kid." "I said, "I'm gonna fight with you,"" "cos there was a scene where I wanted him to fight with Lee Remick." "I said, "Even if I say 'stop', don't stop."" "So he yells, "Action", and the kid hits him right square in the balls." "Just bang, bang... and wouldn't get off him." "He yelled, "Cut", everything." "He clawed my face and beat the hell out of me." "I had to get the family to take him away." "Dick finally said, "Take him, dye his hair black." "He's the Antichrist."" "Little Harvey Stephens would be the perfect Damien." "According to theologians, the real Antichrist would have the looks of a sheep and the heart of a demon." "Satan is said in Scripture to be disguised as an angel of light." "He was the most beautiful of the angels, and he fell and became Satan and rebelled against God." "But the fact is that he was very appealing, beautiful." "So it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Antichrist, when he comes, doesn't use things that on the surface appear very attractive to people." "My God, she wanted a baby so much." "What can I tell her'?" "What... will I say'?" "The Birthmark began filming in October 1975." "You could adopt a child." "But as cast and crew gathered for the first day of shooting, many sensed a strange atmosphere on the set." "There was a general feeling when we were making the movie that... something was gonna happen." "It was really difficult to put your finger on what it was but there was a slight discomfort around." "If I may suggest, it even resembles..." "Your wife need never know." "It would be a blessing to her, and to the child." "As the first sequence of the film unfolds, it is apparent that the shadow of darkness is everywhere." "I slid into that shot in the background." "And it was symptomatic of the whole of the story that here was evil, sliding in to the ambience of that movie, and exactly as it does in life." "Here's your boy." "As Robert Thorn settles into his tranquil family life, he is given an unexpected promotion and named ambassador to England, a plot twist taken right out of the Book of Revelation." "The beast is supposed to rise from the eternal sea, the Book of Revelation says." "The eternal sea was interpreted to be the world of turmoil and revolution:" "the world of politics." "Damien's first five years are marked by normalcy." "But with every scene that passes, the film makers heighten the tension as the audience nervously awaits the evidence of evil inside the child." "Damien!" "Damien!" "Damien, look at me!" "I'm over here!" " Damien, I love you." " Look." "There's Nanny." "Look at me, Damien." "It's all for you!" "Oh. my God!" "He was the toughest, most phenomenal little guy." "His eyes, you looked into those eyes and you could see right through." "There was this incredible depth." "The nanny's death makes way for Mrs Baylock, Damien's protector." " Oh, Mrs Baylock." " Yes, ma'am'?" "I'm sorry, but, uh..." "we're a little bit confused." "Oh'?" "Why's that'?" " Well, we don't know how you got here." " Oh." "The, er... the agency." "The agency'?" "Well, yes." "They read in the paper about the... well, about your first nanny, so they sent you another." "Oh, that's it." "Well, if... if I could see your boy... new?" "Her arrival signals the entry of pure evil into the house of Thorn and changes the tone of the film." "Have no fear, little one." "I am here to protect thee." "Everything in this picture is steeped in the Scriptures." "Even Mrs Baylock, even that name, is taken from the devil's handmaidens, who are called B'lalak and B'lalam." "What's the matter, Damien'?" "What's the matter?" "He seems..." "I don't know." "He just seems scared to death." " No!" " Damien!" "Damien!" "Damien's parents may not suspect their son's true identity, but animals seem to know exactly who he is." "Keep all car windows closed." "Baboons are dangerous." "For Lee Remick, the terror she projected during the baboon attack scene wasn't just acting." "She didn't say she couldn't drive a shift car, but she got in the car and drove it and... and stalled it, just as the animals were let loose." "Oh, no!" "They attack and attack." "And Lee Remick didn't know how to drive." "She panicked." "She was terrified." "When you look at her through that window, she was terrified." "And we had to get the animals away from the car." "Mrs Baylock!" " Anything wrong'?" " I just can't stand that noise." "It's not all that bad." "Yes, ma'am'?" " Would you take him out of here, please'?" " He's only playing." "Would you just get him out of here, please'?" "A series of unusual events soon begin to rip the Thorn family apart and eventually drives Mrs Thorn to the brink of insanity." "Of course, the Thorns don't suspect their boy is the Antichrist." "For director Richard Donner, this is what made the film all the more interesting." "Every incident could be explained in both real and supernatural terms." "You did it on the basis of:" "Nobody'll ever believe what happened today." "That's how we treated the film, in their lives these massive coincidences happen." "In the scene in which Father Brennan tries to warn Robert Thorn of Damien's evil origins, the priest's fears are dismissed as the ravings of a madman." "We haven't much time." "You must listen to what I have to say." "All right." "What is it'?" "You must accept Christ as your saviour." "You must accept him now." "Forgive me, but didn't I understand that you have a matter of urgent personal business?" "You must take Communion." "Drink the blood of Christ and eat his flesh." "Only if he is within you can you defeat the son of the devil." " I see." " He's killed once." "He'll kill again." "But the devil doesn't take the priest so lightly, and the ultimate price for betrayal is paid in a most gruesome way." "No!" "The priest's death is one of the most shocking scenes in the film." "And because it was done in the days before computer effects, the shot was achieved using simple yet effective techniques." "All it was was a double rod in the back." "So on cue, one rod shoots up and one shoots down, so it looks like it came through him." "Such things do happen." "In fact, the impaling came from a story in New York where I was living at the time." "Somebody had been impaled by a cross that fell from the top of a church." "There are 47." "I counted them." "I think he was trying to keep something out, don't you'?" "Played by David Warner, a photographer named Jennings soon presents Thorn with proof positive that supernatural forces are at work." "Interesting, don't you think'?" "And this..." "I took on the day that you were at the rugby match." " Same thing'?" " Only it's more pronounced and it's actually making contact with the body." "The rest, of course, history." "This isn't the horror genre." "I never saw it as a horror movie myself." "I saw it as more of a kind of strange, supernatural thriller/suspense drama rather than a horror film." " Here we are." " What is it'?" " "When the Jews return to Zion..."" " That's the poem." ""When the Jews return to Zion."" "And there was something about a comet." "Yes, that's here too. "The shower of stars and the rise of the Roman Empire."" "These are supposed to be the events that signal the birth of the Antichrist." "The devil's child." "The whole script was so fantastical, so fantastical that one didn't know whether it would work." "In Revelations it says:" " "He shall rise from the eternal sea."" " That's the poem again." ""From the eternal sea he rises, creating armies on either shore."" " That was the beginning of it." " Theologians have interpreted the "eternal sea" as meaning the world of politics, the sea that constantly rages with turmoil and revolution." "So the devil's child will rise from the world of politics." "Ironically, this poem which foretells the arrival of an Antichrist is not actually in the Bible." "Most of it is a poetic creation, made up based on generic religious imagery from the Old and New Testaments." "But it is certainly not anything that is taken directly as a quotation out of the Book of Revelation." "I made up the rhyme, but I did not make up the prediction of these events." "I went, in every possible way I could, with the biblical symbolism from the Book of Revelations." "In an effort to discover the truth, Thorn investigates his child's past." "Sister." "This is most important to me." "I adopted a child here." "I'm searching for some records of it..." "There were no adoptions here." "But each revelation only deepens the mystery and wraps it in a shroud of death and destruction." "Father Spiletto, my name is Thorn." "There was a child." "I want to know where that child came from." "What happened'?" "Answer!" "Cerveteri." "It is an old cemetery from Etruscan times." "What Thorn finally learns is more horrifying than he or anyone could imagine." "Oh, my God." " The other one." " No." "Let's get out of here." "If it's an animal too, then maybe my child" "is alive somewhere." "They murdered him." "They murdered him as soon as he was born." "Shooting the Rottweilers proved to be tremendously difficult." "Not because they were dangerous but because they were, in fact, timid." "Don't run." "It's only the smell of the graves." "They just wouldn't come anywhere near us." "So we had to put meat down our shirts and under our armpits to get them to come." "Cos, you know, they just wouldn't attack us." "Run!" "Half the time they were humping each other." "I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."" ""We can't have dogs making love when they're supposed to be attacking."" "With the help of trainers," "Richard Donner was able to complete the scene." "Aagh!" "Aagh!" "As Thorn battles evil far from home," "Damien comes into his own and uses his new-found powers to deal with those who begin to suspect him, even his own mother." "Oh!" "Damien!" "Damien!" "No,no,no,no!" "No!" "No!" "Aagh!" "This scene called for Lee Remick to fall off the balcony and onto the hardwood floor below, a stunt the actress refused to perform." "She wouldn't do the fall." "I said, "Come on." She said, "That's it." "There's no discussion."" "The special-effects team came up with a solution using simple camera tricks." "A wall became a floor, and one of the film's most macabre moments became an instant screen classic." "We made plastic water, orange sardines nailed to the wall from a sardine can, a rug nailed to the wall, a palm tree hanging out of the top frame with its fronds wired up to the top so they would defy gravity." "And then we'd put Lee Remick on a dolly, on the floor, standing up." "No,no,no,no!" "As she goes away from camera, we turned the dolly and she hit the floor, which is really the wall." "Fortunately, the dark theme of the film did not stop Donner from showing some compassion, as the goldfish of the film were lucky to discover." "They were gonna put real goldfish in but I made them paint sardines orange." "I couldn't kill a goldfish." "Later we just put one on the floor to flap." "But he went right back and he stayed with me till he died of old age." "Perhaps the most graphic and technically challenging death in the movie was that of the photographer played by David Warner." "David Warner wouldn't attend that scene." "It was so realistic, he refused to come out of his dressing room and watch as that scene was being done." "You don't see the blood splattering like in a Peckinpah picture." "You just get the..." "you know, and it bounces." "The tricky thing with it was lining it all up so it hit in exactly the right place, cos if it hit too low, they'd just knock the body over and the head would drop." "What we were trying to do was just catch the head so that as it came off, it spun." "There was no blood, but what I did do was put a bottle of wine on the table when the glass goes through into the little compartment." "So when the head's rolling around, the wine is spilled and you see red wine." "But it's not blood." "David Warner wasn't the only nervous member of the crew." "A series of eerie happenings had haunted the production from the moment filming began." "When you walked onto the set, both in Rome and in the studio, there was a positive sense of evil." "Gregory Peck used to go out every night to his favourite restaurant in London, and for one night, just for a whim, he decided not to go to that restaurant, and that was the very night that the IRA threw in a bomb," "blew up the entire restaurant and killed six people." "Some of us going over on the plane to England, the plane was struck by lightning, went through this terrible storm." "People thought that the plane would crash." "I can remember Harvey saying to me at one point that a lot of people in America were praying for us because they didn't think the devil would allow the movie to be made." "I really, firmly believe that the devil didn't want us to make the film." "Dick Donner didn't believe it, but I did." "If you make a comedy, everything that's funny, stupid, silly that happens you remember and talk about." ""This is the funniest picture." "You know what happened?"" "So we made The Omen, and we did have some terrible coincidences." "The incidents quickly came to be known as "the curse", a curse which the film's publicity unit made public." "But it was while filming in a London hospital that the cast and crew of The Birthmark received perhaps the most disturbing news." "Our signs in the lobby said "This way to the Birthmark set", and we got complaints that day from the ob-gyn department in the hospital because there were pregnant women there and they said they didn't want to see anything dealing with birthmarks around." "So we got to thinking about the title and would that turn off a segment of the audience, and it was decided to change that title." "Within days, the title of the film was changed from The Birthmark to The Omen, and one of the most frightening franchises in cinema history was born." "It must be done on hallowed ground." "A church." "The movie's climax begins when Thorn learns that he must kill his son in a grisly ritual." "It is a task the ambassador, like any father, is unwilling to carry out." "This first knife is most important." "It extinguishes physical life and forms the centre of the cross." "Make no mistake." " Is there proof'?" " Oh, yes." "He bears a birthmark." "A sequence of sixes." "In Revelation, 666 is the number of the beast, but it's not prophesied as being tattooed or scarred on him in some way." "The shocking discovery of the birthmark confirms Thorn's worst fear:" "his son is the Antichrist." "In a sequence inspired by the Book of Genesis," "Thorn must now kill his only child on a church altar." "Behind the scenes, Donner faced an epic battle to convince Gregory Peck to perform the sequence." "He didn't think it would be necessarily good for his image to be seen killing this little boy at the end of the picture." "And so he refused to do the scene that way, and Harvey sat down and talked with him and said, "I'll tell you what."" ""We'll shoot it the way that you want, and then we'll shoot it the way I want, and we'll see which comes out the best."" "In the script the police arrive just as Thorn is about to plunge the daggers into his son." "God help me!" "Police!" "Drop!" "Drop, or I'll fire!" "In a desperate attempt to stop the murder, one officer discharges his weapon." "But achieving the slow-motion shot was more difficult than first imagined." "Special high-speed cameras and unusually powerful lights were required to film an actual bullet being launched from a gun." "The intensity of the light was so strong, to get the exposure, that the wax on the bullet, and the oil, started to smoke and melt before we could even pull the trigger." "If the guy was holding it in the right position in the lights for any appreciable time, it got so hot he couldn't hold it." "So it was, timingwise, a very tricky thing to shoot." "After a gruelling three-month production schedule in London, Jerusalem and Rome," "The Omen completed principal photography on January 2, 1976." "Whether the film would be a monster-sized hit or a forgettable flop remained a mystery." "But one thing was certain:" "the Omen curse was only just beginning." "When studio executives first screened The Omen, they loved the film's haunting blend of tension and terror." "the film's ending." "In the spring of 1976, studio chief Alan Ladd Jr instructed Richard Donner to return to Pinewood Studios and change the final scene, a feat the director accomplished by adding this simple funeral scene." "And suddenly you realise the kid's standing there, he's lived." "He turned to the camera and I said, "Hold that face." "Don't you dare laugh."" ""if you laugh, I'll never talk to you again."" "And all of a sudden this big smile came onto his face." "It was just worth a million bucks." "20th Century Fox executives were now convinced they had a hit on their hands." "Initially, the studio wanted to market the film as a horror movie, not a thriller." "But Richard Donner and producer Harvey Bernhard quickly complained to the head of Fox's marketing department." "Harvey and I ranted," ""You can't treat this movie like this." "See what it is. it's a thriller, not a horror film."" "He says, "Hey, everybody, relax." "It's only a movie."" "Harvey went over to the desk, grabbed the guy, put him up against the wall and said:" ""To you it's only a movie." "To me it's my life." ""I'll friggin' kill you unless you get this right."" "The studio decided to hire a New York advertising agency." "The campaign was simple and played up the prophecies in the Book of Revelation." "It was one of the great teaser campaigns I've ever seen." "Oh, God." "The 666." ""Coming June 6, 1976."" "The series of posters, which was, "90 days to the end of the world."" ""89 days until..."" "And the curiosity factor in the country was very strong." "Despite Fox's current financial hardship, the struggling studio spent $2.8 million inundating the country with print ads and theatrical trailers." "There are those who would die for him." "Look at me, Damien." "It's all for you." "There are those who will kill for him." "Who is he'?" "What does he want'?" "Where did he come from'?" "And can he be stopped'?" "Aagh!" "This is not a human child." "Was it a coincidence'?" "Or was it an omen'?" "No!" "Fox's publicity department reinforced the marketing campaign by playing up the so-called Omen curse with the press." "At the same time, writer David Seltzer released a novelisation of the film which became an instant bestseller." "It came out five or six weeks before the film." "And definitely it cross-pollinated the audience for the movie." "Following a series of sneak previews around the country, audiences were in a frenzy to see the film." "In its first weekend, The Omen grossed nearly $4.5 million." "The Omen was the number one picture out of probably 500 movies released that year, and also the largest-grossing picture in the history of 20th Century Fox studios." "It just was phenomenal." "People came and came and came and came." "Audiences loved the ambiguity of the story line." "Every death had a plausible explanation, but with an eerie twist." "Was Damien evil'?" "Or was he just an innocent victim of cruel coincidence'?" "There was a logical explanation for everything rather than making it a mysterious supernatural happening." "it was always the Antichrist." "I chose to believe that it was his fault." "There was no accident in my mind, as a maker of the film." "Many religious scholars applauded the film for inspiring audiences to read the Bible." "In June 1976, the filmmakers were given an award by the California Graduate School of Theology." "I met many people that only started reading the Bible because they saw The Omen." "What in God's name are you talking about'?" "Your son, Mr Thorn." "The son of the devil." "And many who got so scared that they went back to church for the first time after seeing The Omen." "But not all religious groups approved of The Omen." "The Catholic League labelled the film blasphemous." "The basic premise of The Omen and many films like it, is simply wrong, because they're looking at the birth of the Antichrist, or signs to accompany the birth of the Antichrist, and that is simply not biblical." "The religious debate sparked by the film only served to increase audience awareness and drive up worldwide box-office receipts." "The Omen quickly became a pop-culture phenomenon." "Look at me, Damien." "It's all for you!" "The Omen brought the idea of the Antichrist into the mainstream." "It also made the numbers 666 and the name Damien synonymous with evil." "The silent presence of this beautiful little boy with the birthmark, the telltale 666, made it very scary." "By January 1977, the film had grossed close to $70 million." "That money helped cash-strapped 20th Century Fox complete several films, including a small science-fiction film called Star Wars." "At the Academy Awards in 1977, composer Jerry Goldsmith won an Academy Award for his haunting score." "The success of that movie allowed Lucas to finish his film." "Fox was running out of money for film production." "They'd had a really bad year." "The Omen paid for it." "20th Century Fox, which had been in a financial quagmire, was now able to dig its way out of its fiscal hole." "And, hoping to cash in on the success of the film, the studio immediately asked the production team to scare up a sequel." "The Omen was about to become a frightening franchise, and a terrifying screen trilogy was about to be born." "Producer Harvey Bernhard first turned to David Seltzer to write the second Omen film." "But Seltzer wanted no part in a sequel." "I'm not interested in doing sequels, as a writer." "I did offer to create a Bible for at least six more of them." "Had they given me the opportunity, I would have started out the next day, with that innocent kid in the White House." "Instead, Bernard hired Stanley Mann to pen the story." "But almost from the start, producers Bernhard and Neufeld butted heads with Fox." "They wanted the boy at 13." "I wanted him in high school." "What is a 13-year-old gonna do'?" "It's a difficult position to be in." "But they prevailed." "It's more difficult to make an audience believe that a teenager," "in the adolescent years, can be this powerful." "You gotta keep reminding them, "This is the Antichrist."" "Omen ll was slated to begin shooting In October 1977 with a $5.1 million budget, twice the cost of the original film." "14-year-old British actor Jonathan Scott-Taylor was hired to play the teenage Antichrist." "William Holden, who had turned down the lead in the first film, played Richard Thorn, Damien's uncle, while Lee Grant played Thorn's wife, Ann." "I loved Omen I. I thought it was an extraordinary picture." "I was truly frightened, but I loved it." "So, when I was asked to do Omen ll, I really jumped at the chance." "Because Richard Donner was busy directing Superman in England, the producers turned to director Michael Hodges to helm the sequel." " Damien!" " I'm coming!" "Set in Chicago, Damien:" "Omen ll showed the devil's son settled into his uncle's family as an honours student at a military school." " Have a good week." " Bye." "Damien Thorn is seen as athletic, good-looking, smart, and even more powerful." "What's wrong, Thorn'?" "Am I boring you'?" "Let's stick with dates." "The emperor's death'?" "1821." " Battle of the Nile'?" " 1789." " Trafalgar'?" " 1805." " Thirty Years' War'?" " Start or finish?" " Start." " 1618." " The Black..." "Death'?" " 1334." " Abraham Lincoln's death'?" " 1865." " Charles I. - 1649." " Oliver Cromwell." " 1658." " Thomas More'?" " 1535." " Thomas é Becket'?" " 1170." " The Black Prince?" " 1376." "Thorn!" "Come here." "Outside." "As the young Antichrist discovers his true identity, he struggles to cope with his evil responsibilities." " What were you trying to do'?" " I was just answering questions, Sergeant." " You were showing off." " No, I just knew all the answers." "He was scared, scared like a child is." "I kept saying to him, "You're gonna feel it." "You'll feel the power."" ""Don't worry." "Just stick around." "I'll be there for you."" " You mustn't attract attention." " I wasn't trying to." "I just felt..." "The day will come when everyone will know who you are." "But that day is not yet." " What do you mean'?" " There are things you don't understand." "Read your Bible." "In the New Testament there is a Book of Revelation." "For you, it is just that, a book of revelation." "For you." "About you." "The idea of Satan and the devil has become so trivialised, so cliche." "A little thing with horns, a little fork, a little tail." "So it's much more terrifying that you don't know what currency evil is any more." "As before, the production was plagued by problems." "Just before filming, William Holden's best friend was stabbed while the pair was on vacation in China." "A crew member was involved in a fatal traffic accident." "And the whole crew came down with a rare form of influenza, even though there was no reported outbreak in Chicago." "The Omen curse had struck again." "Everybody seemed to get a memo:" ""We are going to look for anything strange going on, like flat tyres, car accidents for no reason."" ""Tell us so we can get it in the paper right away."" "My bull- detector picked up that Harvey was constructing mythology." "The film was also cursed with other, more earthly, problems." "Almost immediately after filming began, production ground to a halt as the director lingered on seemingly insignificant shots." "We had all the fellas from the military academy there cos they were gonna march." "The wind wasn't blowing right." "And he looked through the camera..." "The guys are sitting there all day long." "He wanted to do it like a painter." "And I think Harvey, standing on the sidelines, or somebody from the studio, saw the dailies and said, "This ain't gonna work."" "Hodges left and Don Taylor came in, watched several days of dailies and then picked up, and the film was finished, I think, a day over schedule." "Which proves that in the movie business you can do anything." "Don Taylor was a veteran director of such films as The Island of Dr Moreau and Escape from the Planet of the Apes." "He had a reputation for keeping his movies on time and on budget." "It also didn't hurt that Taylor had a personal relationship with the film's star, William Holden." "Taylor and Holden had acted together in two films during the 1950s." "Quiet!" "And under Taylor's tight rein, the film quickly got back on schedule." "But the movie still suffered from a major story problem:" "How do you tell what is basically a coming-of-age story about the Antichrist'?" "Look at him." "Now back to your cake." "Yes." "The time is coming for you to put aside childish things and face up to who you are." "A great moment, Damien." "Surely you must be feeling it'?" "No!" "He has no woman, so it takes 50% of the picture away from him, because what's he gonna do'?" "So, it was built on five or six events that are horrendous." "But there's no meat in the story in between the sequences of horror." "Marion, say what you've got to say." "If it's unpleasant, let's get it over with." "I want you to take the boys out of the academy." "I want you to send them to separate schools." "Marion, just what the hell is this about'?" "Get Mark away from Damien." "They don't belong together!" "Initially, the death scenes in Omen ll started off with relatively minor screen violence." "The very first on-screen fatality occurs at the hands of deadly animals." "Agh!" "There have always been stories of demons occupying animals." "Again, it's linking the bestial with the human." "Omen ll unfolds, the death scenes blossom into spectacles of big-screen gore." "When The Omen came out, there was that decapitation scene everybody was talking about." "There was also an impaling." "These are things that people had not seen in movies before." "That means you couldn't do it again." "It had to be something new the next time out." "You should tone 'em down, not tone 'em up." "There had to be excitement built from one scene to another scene to another scene of violence, violence and violence." "I didn't agree with it, but... gm stops)" "That, to me, was the essence of the movie." "It was like, "Uh-oh, here it comes."" "You can see it coming a mile away, and then they gave it to you." "Arghh!" "Arghh!" "No!" "No!" "No!" "Arghh!" "Arghh!" "Then he went on to the next one." "Action!" "But perhaps the most challenging and chilling death scene to film was the death of Bill Atherton, played by veteran actor Lew Ayres." "Atherton is an assistant in the Thorn family business who raises questions about Damien's evil identity." "His haunting death scene combined the twin dangers of extreme cold and water." "When he went under the ice, it scared me." "He was trying to decide whether a double should go under the ice or whether he should." "I remember saying to him, "Please don't go."" "Hold on, Bill!" "Ayres performed the stunt right up to the edge of the ice." "From there, a stuntman took over." " He's here!" " The current's got him!" "Spread out, everybody!" "Can anybody see him'?" "The stuntman had a line on him and he actually went under the ice." "He had to hold his breath for two minutes." "Somebody get an axe!" "It was freezing." "He was under the water for two minutes without a mask." " How long can he stay under'?" " He's moving!" "Stand back, everybody!" "Mr Thorn!" "Hurry!" "Spread out!" "Everybody, spread out!" " Pull him out!" "Pull him out!" " Get him out!" "Get him out!" "Is he OK'?" "But in spite of the film's many horrific deaths," "Omen ll presented a more developed and emotionally complex main character than the little boy depicted in the first film." "Say it, Mark." " He said you're the beast!" " Come on!" "What are you talking about'?" "Your father tried to kill you!" "They say he was crazy, but it was because he knew!" "I love you, Mark." "You're like my brother!" "Come with me, Mark." " I can take you with me." " No." "Don't make me beg you, Mark." "No, Damien." "It's very interesting that some Christians still pray for the conversion of the devil." "Some Christians even think that even the devil might ultimately turn back to God and still be saved, so that everyone, all angels, all human beings, can be saved by God." "But nothing can save Damien, not even prayer." " You can't make me believe it!" " You've got to!" " He killed Mark, Atherton and Pasarian." " What'?" "He'll kill anyone he thinks is threatening him!" "In fact, the only way to save the world from the boy's evil is to kill him, a task which falls to his uncle, Richard Thorn." "Richard..." "For me, Richard, don't." "Ann, what are you doing'?" "Get away from that drawer." "What you want to do is crazy." "I can't let you, Richard." "Ann!" "You're obsessed with Damien!" "It's making you sick." "Give me the daggers." "Agh!" " There are your daggers!" " Ann..." "I've always belonged to him." "I had hoped that at the end of the film, when I killed the Bill Holden character, that people would be utterly seduced." "Damien!" "Omen ll hit theatres in the summer of 1978, the paperback novelisation of the story was already a bestseller." "The terror of the past, is but a taste of the future." "Tell me about Damien." "What sort of a boy is he'?" "He's your brother's son." "He's a boy you've loved for seven years!" "Five deaths, five unexplained, horrible accidents." "We are all in great danger." "The first time was only a warning." " William Holden." " Where's Damien'?" " Lee Grant." " Damien!" "Critics blasted the film, calling it "predictable", with "no scares" and "few surprises"." "Those who worked on the first film agreed" "Omen ll lacked the depth of the original." "It was a good picture, but I'd say it wasn't as a classic picture as the first one was." "If somebody looks at him funny, he kills them'?" "That's a story about a serial killer." "That's not a story that has any kind of gothic, otherworldly content to it." "But in the days of splatter films like Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, those gruesome scenes were exactly what audiences wanted." "Omen ll grossed nearly $30 million, enough to satisfy 20th Century Fox and tempt them into financing another chilling sequel." "Harvey Bernhard had originally planned to produce as many as seven Omen films." "By 1980, the producer decided to settle for a trilogy." "We had to kill him sometime." "You couldn't go on and continue for him to win." "He had to die." "Bernhard envisioned the third Omen film to follow Damien in the final days before he takes over the world." "The Antichrist is now a 33-year-old adult, the same age Jesus Christ was when he was crucified." "To play the role of the grown-up Antichrist, the producers wanted a charismatic unknown who wouldn't break the bank." "Bernhards friend, actor James Mason, suggested Sam Neill, a young New Zealand actor who had just wowed audiences with his turn in My Brilliant Career." "We got a picture of Sam and we sent him to Fox, and they said they wouldn't pay the way for the transportation to do a film test in England." "So James Mason and his wife put up the money for Sam Neill to fly and do a screen test in London." "I was at the White Elephant to meet Sam Neill for the first time, in London." "And he walked through the door, everybody turned, and I knew he was a star, just like that." "He had a presence about him." "Sam Neill was hired to play Damien, and James Mason was repaid for the young actor's air fare." "To helm the film, the producers turned to a young British director, Graham Baker." "The hour of Christ's Second Coming draws nigh." "Right now, my friends, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, a holy trinity of stars is converging to herald our Lord's Second Coming." "The Final Conflict opens with Damien at the peak of his corporate power." "But wealth isn't all that he is after." ""The beast shall reign one hundred score and thirty days and nights"" "is another way of saying seven years." "That's the time I've been head of Thorn." ""And out of the angel isle he shall bring forth a deliverer."" "The "angel isle", the original Latin has "ex insula angelorum"." "England." "The Second Coming." "Only it won't be the beast that is destroyed." "It'll be the Nazarene." "You said you were gonna be offered the post of ambassador to Great Britain." "What about our present ambassador'?" "In a bloody scene reminiscent of the second Omen film," "Damien uses his powers to dispense with the American ambassador to England so that he can take the job." "Come in." "While ambassador, Damien puts together a loyal army of followers ready to follow his every command." "Disciples of the watch," "I stand before you in the name of the one true god, who was cast out from heaven but is alive" "in me." "It's consistent with the whole concept of deception, that Satan is the father of lies, that he is a great deceiver, and that he uses those things that we consider to be very appealing to his benefit, to deceive people." "But while The Final Conflict shared many of the same gory aspects of the second film, it also included a love story." "Damien." "I'd like you to meet Kate Reynolds." "Miss Reynolds works for British television." "How do you do, Miss Reynolds?" "Damien's girlfriend was played by young New Zealand actress Lisa Harrow." "On the screen test, there was a certain deep chemistry touch between us." "And subsequently, when we started filming, we began living together very quickly." "By the second week of filming, the car kept pulling up outside my apartment rather than his hotel." "You wanna see what I see'?" "I want you, Damien." "I fell in love with the man playing Damien." "So as far as I was concerned, there was an enormous sex appeal that was palpable." "Mummy, look what Damien's given me!" " No, you can't." " He can." "He just did." "It's safer with him." "If I have a collision, we might have some sort of international crisis on our hands." "I'm not sure you should spoil him so much." "Well, to tell you the truth, he's been spoiling me." "It's not every day you get the chance to be a boy again." "Damien's benevolent façade allows him to seduce everyone he meets." "He quickly becomes the darling of the British social scene, all the while using his company to gain control of the world's food supply." "The economic crisis of the past decade has brought inflation, famine and chaos to every corner of the globe." "Some label it the Great Recession." "Others are calling it Armageddon." "But amid all the pessimism, one voice rings out its faith in the future:" "Thorn, the world's leading light in building a new tomorrow." "I said I wanted action, not words." "I wanna see Thorn at work." "A thousand starving kids clamouring for a bellyful of Thorn soya." "Thorn medical teams, construction, engineering." "Instead of which, you spend half the commercial giving us a third-grade version of the history of the Ice Age." "In the meantime, go with the old commercial." "I don't want that one used." "The devil, or other personifications of evil, may not necessarily do things directly, but acting through the political system, the economic system, to make people go against each other." "We were both created in man's image." "But while you were born of an impotent god," "I was conceived of a jackal." "Born of Satan, the desolate one, the nail..." "Your pain on the cross was but a splinter compared to the agony of my father, cast out from heaven," "the fallen angel, banished, reviled." "I think the whole frightening message was that he could be anybody." "He's not the one that you would most suspect." "He's just going about his business, like the devil often does." "But Damien's march towards world domination does not go unchecked." "With no father figure to destroy him, the third Omen introduces a group of monks, a religious commando unit whose sole mission is to hunt down and destroy the Antichrist." "In sharp contrast to the ambassador's graphic death at the beginning of the film, the attempted assassinations are far less bloody." "One monk stalks Damien by horseback and is bucked off the animal over a bridge." "Aagh!" "Another monk meets his fate by way of a pack of hunting dogs." "Take him." "Aagh!" "Aagh!" "But the most inventive death scene, a monk's fiery demise in a television studio, was almost never filmed." "No one spoke to me about the famous Omen curse, but it very quickly began to assert itself when we shot the scene in the television studio where the body comes flying down and destroys everything." "Damien!" "We shot that scene over a week." "It kept going wrong." "The stunt kept going wrong." "They couldn't make it right." "Everyone got angrier and angrier, we were wasting valuable time." "In spite of the Omen curse, the filmmakers finally captured the scene." "Excuse me, sir." "We're at T minus 500." "The final countdown is about to start." "But the monks aren't the only religious element in the third Omen film, nor are they Damien's only threat." "There, gentlemen, are your three stars." "The waiting of 2,000 years is at an end." "In fact, the film shows the fulfillment of a prophecy that is supposed to divine the Second Coming of Christ." "People have different expectations of what the Second Coming will look like." "Some people think that the Second Coming of Jesus will be just like the first, born as a baby, growing up slowly, needing to be protected from evil forces." "Most people would say that the Bible shows the Second Coming will be very sudden." "Hoping to destroy the baby Jesus," "Damien orders the death of every newborn male child in England." "There are still three daggers left." "But I can't afford to waste any more time." "The only way to be rid of the Nazarene is to kill every male child in the country born between midnight and dawn" " on March 24th." " How can we be sure he's in the country'?" ""And he shall come forth out of the angel isle." That's what the prophecy says." "One thing pedantic Christians believe in is sticking to the letter of their prophecies." "Though most of the infant deaths were merely talked about, five were actually filmed." "Coming up with so many gruesome scenes proved so difficult that writer Andrew Birkin is rumoured to have paid" "13-year-old actor Barnaby Holm" "$10 for every grisly idea the boy could come up with." "Oh, no!" "No!" "Go on!" "Go away!" "There, now." "It's OK, honey." "He..." "But the one threat Damien can't anticipate is the one that grows from the love of a mother." "Give me back my son" " and I will lead you to the Christ child." " Where is he'?" "Give me back Peter first and I'll take you to him." "Very well." "You shall lead us both to the Nazarene, and then Peter shall be yours." " No, Damien!" "It's a trick!" " Not if she wants her son back, it isn't." "As far as my character was concerned, she was saving the world from this profound evil that was going to be visited upon it through the effect and the presence of this man." "But at the same time, she had to kill the man she loved." "So it was enormously... difficult." "But the fact that he'd seduced her son's mind made it easier." "While filming the climax on the ruins of an old monastery outside London, the Omen curse once again reared its ugly head." "The main generator burst into flames for no reason that anyone could fathom." "So at 3am at Fountains Abbey in the middle of nowhere, suddenly this fire was shooting up to heaven, so everyone went, "That's the Omen curse."" "Fortunately, the curse didn't affect the backup generators and the scene was successfully filmed." "No!" "Peter!" "What is all this'?" "Peter'?" "Oh, Peter, dearest!" " No." " Where is your god now, priest?" "For audiences watching the final scene unfold, it seemed as if the Omen series would end with evil defeating good." "I'm here, Nazarene!" "Where are you'?" "But just as Damien is ready to assume his place as ruler of the earth," "Jesus Christ strikes him down." "Nazarene." "You have won nothing." "The final images of the film include passages borrowed directly from the Book of Revelation." "At the end of The Final Conflict, you hear this great music and trumpets and so forth and it's got these verses about how Jesus will return and rule in triumphant power and so on and so forth," "which made it totally accurate." "Like the first film," "Christian groups praised the third instalment for its message that, in the end, good will defeat evil." "From a Christian and a biblical standpoint, the assurance is that God will win." "L-low that's gonna happen, well, again that depends on how you want to personify evil or in what way... what kind of images you want to use to display evil versus good." "But ultimately, the faith of the Christian Church is that good will win out over evil." "But to those who hold the devil in high regard, the ending of Omen Ill was brutally inaccurate." "To drive their point home, devil worshippers protested outside of 20th Century Fox studios in Los Angeles." "I acknowledge that it's a necessary ending, but it often seems very contrived." "But it makes people feel better, I guess." "In addition to the religious debate surrounding the movie, another more profound tragedy shined a dark light on the Omen film." "In February 1981, one month before The Final Conflict was released, a young Sacramento, California, girl murdered her sister." "She claimed the devil made her do it and that she had first come to know the devil after watching the original Omen film." "With so much public controversy over the Omen films, many felt The Final Conflict would meet unparalleled success at the box office." "Unfortunately for 20th Century Fox, the film pulled in a relatively unimpressive $23 million." "As far as the Omen trilogy was concerned, the devil was finally dead." "So, it seemed, were his movies." "In the years following The Final Conflict, 20th Century Fox underwent a metamorphosis." "Under the ownership of Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch the studio launched several new ventures, including its own television network." "By 1990, the Fox Television Network's line-up included a series of low-budget movies of the week." "After searching 20th Century Fox's story archive, development executives decided that The Omen would make a perfect TV movie." "In looking at Fox's library to see if there were any franchises or individual pictures that we could possibly resurrect, one of the very first that came to mind was The Omen." "And if one wants to resurrect the Omen franchise, the logical place to start is with the man who first conceived of and really was sort of the guiding force for all three of the Omen theatricals, and that would be Harvey Bernhard." "They wanted to do Omen I again." "And I said, you know..." "There was a lot of things we could have done." "The computers were coming in." "I felt that it should be computer-oriented." "But they insisted it be along the lines of Omen I, only it was a girl." "Wait until you see her." "She's a tiny miracle." "With a modest $4.3 million budget," "The Awakening was shot on location in Vancouver, Canada." "Dominique Othenin-Girard, known for his work on horror films like Halloween 5 and Night Angel, was hired to direct." "Faye Grant was cast as Karen York, the young Antichrist's adoptive mother." "Harvey Bernhard called me and said," ""I want you to do this sequel to The Omen."" "And I thought it was a practical joke." "So they sent me sort of an outline." "I was attracted to the idea of one woman facing this evil and hitting it head-on, face to face." "Everybody, I'd like you to meet Delia." "In many ways, the fourth film mirrors the original Omen movie:" "an unsuspecting couple with political connections adopts a child." "I thought that was ridiculous." "Hollywood has a penchant for milking a good idea and carrying it on as far as they can." "I think Hollywood, you know, repeats itself." "My father is your father." "I don't..." "I don't understand." "What's the matter with you'?" "Why did you do that'?" "What evil made you do that'?" "The child's arrival coincides with a series of bizarre, inexplicable events," "and the parents soon begin to doubt their own child, driving a wedge in their relationship." "Honey, come on." "Don't you think it's odd that our daughter has never been ill'?" "No, not necessarily." "She obviously has a strong immune system." "Strong immune system?" "Friends'?" "Friends." "She has no friends." "Don't you think that's odd'?" "The Awakening was more than just a simple rehash of the first film." "I warned you about this." "But no, no, you never pay attention." "That kid is trouble." "I mean it." "You'll hear from me." "In this movie, young Delia knows exactly who she is and she isn't afraid to use her supernatural powers." "No!" "The movie also expanded on the Judaeo- Christian themes of the first three films by incorporating New Age and Native American spirituality." "Thank you." "Let's go." " What's this place'?" " This is Noah and some friends." "Let's get our picture taken." "What are you doing'?" "I thought it'd be fun to get our picture taken." "No, you didn't!" "Oh, my God." "Noah, these colours, or lack of, sepia and black." "This is the aura of a Borgia, not a little girl." "The newest element in the fourth film is the introduction of a hard-boiled private eye played by actor Michael Lerner." "My fee is 300 a day." "Plus expenses." "I want you to find someone for me." "Missing persons is mostly my business." "The baby in this photograph is our adopted daughter." "I want you to find her parents." "The novice is Sister Yvonne." "I have an address for her." "I'm not sure it's good." "This photograph was taken years ago at St Francis orphanage." "He was just like an ordinary guy." "But for about a week or two in Vancouver, I was doing scenes with the mother, and that was just a very gentle, caring, you know, kind of like a low-rent Columbo." " What'?" " You've got Sister Yvonne." "A nun who became a hooker and now is some kind of hell-fire prophet with a cult." "She goes by the name of Felicity." "I tracked her down to a small town in North Carolina." "I thought maybe I'd go and share her vision." "Though the film showcased many impressive special effects and stunts, perhaps the most dangerous scenes involved tens of snakes confined in a glass cage." "It is only through a demonstration of faith the Source can deem us worthy of surviving the final battle." " Praise God!" " Praise God!" "Hallelujah!" "I have an aversion to reptiles to begin with." "Do not be afraid." "They had a double for the girl who gets bitten by the snakes, and they did shots with the snake handler working with the snakes, and they put a protective covering that looked like skin on the girl, on the woman." "The snake never would touch her." "Unfortunately, there was an incident in which a snake was able to bite through the protective barrel and attach itself to an actor's leg." "Delia!" "According to Harvey Bernhard, it was yet another example of the Omen curse." "We were shooting in a cathedral, and he came in and announced that the previous rector had fallen from the balcony inexplicably and died, and he was totally making it up, completely," "trying to create a mystique." "It was impossible to get through the day without hearing at least one Omen curse story courtesy of Harvey Bernhard." "The mythology of all of the various suspicious incidents and crazy things and reputed demonic activity that characterised those three pictures had, over the years, built into its own special lore." "Though many of the cast and crew were sceptical of the curse, many others, especially the fearless publicity unit, believed in it." "The so-called Omen curse even carried over into creative disputes with the director." "I remember one of the first scenes I'm in in the film, it's Christmas Eve and I'm walking through the streets, and all of a sudden... it's like Satan, it's like hell, like Dante's Inferno." "He wanted to get all the dwarfs and horrible creatures in this picture, make it so distasteful." "It didn't really impact me that I was making this kind of horror movie until the day happened that I become part of the horror situation." "They made a body cast of me, which wasn't incredibly flattering cos I was heavy, as I am heavy, and it was funny to see, and the moment that I remember the most was where I get decapitated and crushed" "and die pretty brutally." "That was great." "That was great." "Just the same as Omen ll, the director was great until he started directing." "I was dying." "Because he stood all day in an alley filming through a window, nothing." "I mean, a shot that took five minutes." "They only had, I think, a week or two to go, and then all of a sudden I get, somebody tells me, a new director." "They switched directors." "I had no idea." "Bernhard replaced Othenin-Girard with veteran TV director Jorge Montesi, known for working quickly on low-budget projects." "Montesi saved the film from its budget and scheduling problems, but the scripts sudden twists may have been too difficult for any director to overcome." "The last act of the movie reveals that Delia isn't the Antichrist we all believed she was." "She is merely a bodyguard." "Aagh!" "Aagh!" "I want answers." "Who is Damien Thorn'?" "The diary, it says he's the Antichrist." "Yes, yes." "It's true." "Damien." "He's the whole, Karen." "Damien is the power." "Tell me about Delia." "She's Damien's daughter." "She carried his seed." "The real evil is growing inside Delia's mother, where a doctor has secretly implanted Damien's offspring." "I want to see my son." "Yes, Mother." "See him." "Really see him." "With the Antichrist reborn, it seemed like Fox could recycle the entire Omen series." "Unfortunately for the network, however, the curse carried over to the ratings." "And yet, in spite of the dismal performance of the movie," "The Omen refused to die." "Just four years after The Awakening, the NBC television network ordered a pilot for a weekly Omen series." "Director Richard Donner, who had helmed the first film, returned to executive-produce the programme." "But though the show used the Omen title, its plot had little to do with the films." "Instead, the TV programme focused on evil spirits and seemed to have more in common with Poltergeist than with The Omen." "I hated it." "I don't like to talk about it." "It was like, "Put your name on it and we'll get it made," and I left it to others to make." "In hindsight, it was the biggest mistake I made in television." "Mercifully, NBC only aired the pilot once." "Yes!" "Since then, Damien has been dormant, waiting for the right time to be resurrected." "What if the Antichrist is among us'?" "That one simple idea sparked four films and a television pilot." "It also invaded pop culture." "I want you all to meet our new classmate..." "Uh, what's your name again'?" "Damien!" "Death to the holy!" "The wrath of the fallen angel how makes for you all!" "The movie is quoted on shows like South Park..." "Oh!" "That is one fudged-up little cracker!" "...and referenced in blockbuster films like Wayne's World and The Sixth Sense." "The Omen burned the numbers 666 into our consciousness." "It gave new meaning to the name Damien." " Is there proof'?" " Oh, yes." "He bears a birthmark." "A sequence of sixes." "We had letters, we heard stories about people really looking for 666 on their children." "The Omen's enduring popularity speaks to the simple theme of good versus evil in our everyday lives." "That's why people responded, the essential truth." "Everyone, whether they admit it or not, is aware within themselves that there is in the world" "a sense of evil." "Bugenhagen claims that Damien the beast." "If there's good, there has to be evil." "If there's God, there has to be a devil." "I was conceived of a jackal." "Born of Satan." "For many, the Omen films rekindled an interest in religion, sparking a debate that caused many people to look up the biblical passages upon which the films were based." "A great theologist and famous preacher said one time there's probably been more people scared out of going to hell than just saved by wanting to go to heaven." "But, above all, the Omen films were a success for the same reason all films are:" "they entertained." "Damien!" "I think they become timeless because a recipe was found to truly frighten people and get into their hearts." "The things that you most fear." "Damien!" "Somewhere there's a little note of..." "Kind of, "The good will beat the devil, don't worry."" "Tongue in cheek. "Some people are gonna die, but good's gonna..." "Don't worry."" "It's like a Rorschach." "You can see anything you want to see." "If you're a religious fanatic and wanna see the devil's fighting and it's good over evil, fine, you can see it." "If you wanna see it as a mystery suspense thriller, it has all those attributes." "And it was a hell of a well-made film." "No, Daddy!" "No!" "a name that will forever be associated with evil." "A name that conjures the dark mysteries of a once-obscure chapter of the New Testament." "A name that brings to mind the devil hidden behind the innocent face of a little boy." "A force that causes us to question the true nature of God." "And the real-life legacy, that is The Omen."