Anthony Nicholls | Through the Shattered Lens

A few days ago, Arleigh shared the theme song from 1976’s The Omen as Monday’s horror song of the day. As I sat there and listened to Jerry Goldsmith’s award-winning hymn to Satan, it occurred to me that I happen to have all five of the Omen films sitting in my movie collection. Seeing as how this is Halloween and how the world seems to be getting closer to ending with each passing day, I decided that this would be the perfect time to rewatch the entire franchise and consider whether or not The Omen films are truly as scary as a lot of people seem to think.

So, that’s what I did.

How did things turn out?

Well, in the long history of sequels and remakes, The Omen franchise is one of the more uneven collections. This is one of those franchises where things tend to get less impressive with each subsequent entry. However, 38 years after its initial release, the first Omen remains effective and, in its way, genuinely scary.

If you’re a horror fan, you probably know the general plot of The Omen regardless of whether you’ve actually watched it or not. It’s one of those films that has been so frequently imitated that it’s almost possible to watch it by osmosis.

The film opens in Rome with diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) being rushed to the hospital where his wife, Kathy (Lee Remick), has just given birth. A priest (Martin Benson) tells him that his son died shortly after being born but that he can always just go home with an orphaned newborn that he just happens to have handy. Robert agrees and decides not to tell his wife the truth about the child. Robert and Kathy raise the boy and they name him Damien. Four years later, the politically ambitious Robert is named as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

The Thorns move to London and soon, odd things start to happen. Damien (now played by Harvey Spencer Stephens) is a quiet boy with a piercing stare who throws a fit whenever he’s taken inside of a church. When Kathy takes Damien to the zoo, they’re attacked by angry baboons. A large Rottweiler mysteriously appears on the grounds of the Ambassador’s estate. A mysterious and sinister nanny (Billie Whitelaw) shows up and explains that she’s been sent by an “agency.” A crazed priest (Patrick Troughton) starts to stalk the Ambassador, demanding a chance to speak with him and insisting that Damien’s mother was actually a jackal.

Even more mysteriously, people start dying in the strangest of ways. A young woman (Holly Palance) smiles as she shouts, “Damien, it’s all for you!” and then hangs herself, thoroughly ruining Damien’s fifth birthday party. A freak lightning storm leads to a man being impaled by a weather vane. Another person who suspects that there might be something wrong with Damien ends up losing his head in a graphic sequence that — even in this age of Hostel and Saw — is difficult to watch.

The Ambassador is contact by Keith Jennings (David Warner), a nervous photographer who fears that Damien may be planning on killing him. Soon, Thorn and Jennings are flying to Italy and to the Middle East and discovering evidence that five year-old Damien might very well be the Antichrist. Speaking of Damien, he and that nanny have been left alone with poor, victimized Kathy.

(“Oh, leave her alone,” I muttered as Damien attempted to kill Kathy for the hundredth time…)

As I watched The Omen, I tried to figure out why this film has held up so well. It certainly wasn’t due to the performance of Gregory Peck who, quite frankly, seemed to mostly be going through the motions. David Warner, on the other hand, gave such a good performance that it was almost difficult to watch. (Don’t get attached to any character who appears in an Omen film.) Some of the film’s effectiveness was undoubtedly due to Jerry Goldsmith’s intense score. Anything’s scary when you’ve got a hundred voice shouting “Ave Satani” at you.

But, ultimately, I think the reason why The Omen still works is because the film generates such a palpable sense of doom. This is one of those films that leaves you convinced that anyone can die at any minute and, considering that happens to be true in both this movie and in real life, that makes the horror of The Omen feel very real. By the time the film ends, you’re left with little doubt that nobody in the film had the least bit of power or control over his or her own destiny. Instead, they were all just pawns in a game that they had no hope of ever winning or understanding. Is there anything scarier than feeling powerless?

All I know is that, having rewatched The Omen, I will never look at a plane of glass the same way again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVK42hD9IaY

For today’s final entry in our series of Back to School reviews, let’s close out the 60s by taking a look at a 1968 British film. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, if… not only won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (now known as the Palme d’Or) at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival but it also featured the film debut of future icon Malcolm McDowell.

if… takes place at a British public school (or, as we would call it here in the States, a private school) that is mired in a long tradition of conformity and oppression. For roughly the first half of the film, we see how the school works. The teachers are stern and out-of-touch. The headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) considers himself to be something of a reformer and is clueless as to just how little respect the students have for him. Discipline is maintained by the Whips,sadistic upperclassmen who revel in their power and who spend most of their time speculating about which one of them will claim 13 year-old Bobby Phillips (Rupert Webster) as his own. Three students — Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), Johnny (David Wood), and Wallace (Richard Warwick) — are considered to be nonconformists and soon find themselves being targeted by both the school’s faculty and the Whips. During this first half, the film plays out as harsh but relatively realistic.

And then something happens.

About 45 minutes into the film, if… starts to grow increasingly more and more surreal. In a scene that plays out in languid, sensual slow motion, the otherwise dim-witted Wallace gracefully exercises on a high bar while an entranced Bobby Phillips watches. When Rowntree and his fellow whips decide to punish Mick, Johnny, and Wallace with a particularly brutal caning, the disturbing sound of it echoes throughout the entire school. During a war game, Mick fires an automatic rifle full of blanks at the chaplain and is subsequently forced to apologize while the chaplain sits up in a drawer kept in the headmaster’s office. Mrs. Kemp, the wife of the housemaster, wanders naked through the dormitory. Perhaps most famously, the film goes from randomly being in color to black-and-white and then back again, all adding to the movie’s dreamlike feel.

Perhaps most importantly, Johnny and Mick manage to sneak off campus and spend a day roaming around the city. After they steal a motorcycle from a showroom, they stop at a cafe where they are served coffee by a character known only as the Girl (Christine Noonan). The Girl tells Mick that sometimes she’s a tiger and soon, they are wrestling naked on the floor while Johnny sits in a corner booth and drinks his coffee. Later, when Mick returns to the school, he looks through a telescope and sees the Girl staring back at him and waving.

And finally, the Girl shows up while Mick, Johnny, Wallace, and Bobby are cleaning out a storeroom as a part of their punishment for scaring the chaplain. Among the dusty shelves, they find not only a jar containing a fetus but a cache of weapons as well. This leads to the film’s famous conclusion, a shocking act of violence that, in the 60s, was probably viewed as a show of solidarity with rebellious youth everywhere but, when seen in this time and age, draws disturbing parallels with the American tradition of school shootings.

Seen today, if… remains a surprisingly potent celebration of rebellion and a harsh condemnation of conformist society. Occasionally pretentious in that wonderful way that only a British film made in 1968 could be, if… is also a surprisingly stinging satire that doesn’t leave anyone — even the film’s heroes — untouched. Perhaps best of all, if… is also the film debut of Malcolm McDowell and he gives a strong performance here. It’s easy to understand why, after seeing if…, Stanley Kubrick cast McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Interestingly enough, despite if’s apocalyptic ending, McDowell would play Mick Travis twice more, in Anderson’s O Lucky Man, a film that is even more surreal than if…, and in Britannia Hospital.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue our journey back to school by taking a trip to the 70s!