I enjoyed having nightmares as a child because, in prepubescence, they produced the most intense sensations within my ken--the threat of death, as was so often the crux of these bad dreams, made me feel gloriously alive. Thus, when The Omen came into my life at the tender age of nine, it became an instant favourite, for it closely approximated the frightening experiences I'd had with my eyes wide shut. In other words, it scared the pants off me.

It is with some remorse that I report that the film no longer affects me this way, but now that I'm (relatively) grown-up, I actually find it rewarding on deeper levels. Today, Richard Donner's The Omen strikes me as a solid, memorable piece of cinema, an exciting synthesis of striking camerawork, convicted performances, and a chilling soundmix. And if age and experience have diluted the effectiveness of its cheap thrills, the nihilism that fuelled their resonance in the mind's eye has ascended to the fore--and really gets under one's skin.

As Robert Thorn, an American diplomat living in Rome, Gregory Peck conceals the stillborn status of his son from wife Katy (Lee Remick), surreptitiously switching the body with that of Damien, a healthy infant who was orphaned in childbirth. All could not be more idyllic for Robert, appointed U.S. Ambassador to Britain shortly thereafter, and his family until five years down the road, when the politico's karmic bill comes due: a nanny hangs herself in plain sight at Damien's (Harvey Stephens) birthday bash; teeth-baring rottweilers appear from nowhere; and Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton, one of the original Drs. Who) is impaled by a lightning rod immediately after prophesying Katy's dark future.

Check out now if you don't want any hint of Damien's true nature. Jennings (David Warner), a photographer whose pictures bear a psychic quality of late, contacts Robert: Jennings' snaps of both the nanny and the priest prior to their demise are smudged by double-exposures of the noose and the lightning rod, respectively. A brief investigation of the journals Brennan left behind leads the two back to Rome, where Robert will confirm or deny that he in fact adopted Satan's offspring on that fateful day.

The material certainly has the potential to inspire laughter, and if we look at The Omen's sequels, we see the first film's delicate tone of fall into the trap of hilarious excess. David Seltzer's screenplay was lucky to have Donner at its helm: whatever else you can say about him, he's a director with little tendency towards camp (save the melodramatic deployment of a zoom lens here and there). Donner, in turn, was shrewd enough to cast Peck in the lead. If the evidence shown him by theologians convinces Atticus Finch himself, it is virtually assured that we will believe the far-fetched plot, too.

The Omen is not only gracefully executed: it has guts, with Peck putting his elder statesman reputation on the line by accepting a part that asks him to hold a little boy at knifepoint. The atmosphere, too, is unforgiving, and its innocents are led to slaughter at every turn. General audiences have been conditioned to accept such an atmosphere of dread in only two kinds of entertainment: Russian plays and horror flicks, and even at that, they would prefer not to think about the most depressing examples of either.The main reason I prefer Scream 2 Still, despite treating us like helpless voyeurs instead of accomplices (which is how splatter eventually went mainstream), this was Donner's first big hit, and has at the very least been embraced by the filmmaking community. Stanley Kubrick clearly referenced Damien's violent tri-cycling for scenes of Danny negotiating the hallways of the Overlook in a Bigwheel in The Shining, while The Omen's open ending all but introduced the concept to the genre.

If The Omen is to have any impact off the big screen, DVD is your only viable alternative. Panned-and-scanned videotape versions inhibit the tension generated by cinematographer Gilbert Taylor's compositions. Letterboxed at 2.35:1 (or something slightly wider) and enhanced for 16x9 displays, the image on this disc is unfathomably handsome, sporting true colours and perfect contrast. If the transfer is a bit on the hazy side, that's due to the inherent softness in the lighting style of many a British film from the nineteen-seventies.

As far as the DVD's audio is concerned, a remixed stereo track is loud and vibrant, owing any directionality to Jerry Goldsmith's Academy Award-winning score; I found the original mono sound to be mousy by comparison. A handful of fantastic extras qualify this Omen release as a Special Edition. My favourite of them is the new, 46-minute "666: The Omen Revealed". Prefaced by the mad ramblings of a born-again reverend (who practically asserts that The Omen is the most important motion picture ever made), several members of the principal crew recall in loving detail the making of this low-budget escapade. I was shocked to learn how the baboon assault was achieved (simple: baboons were set loose on the cast), and ecstatic to have the curtains pulled back on the trick shot involving Remick's plummet from a banister.

Donner and editor Stuart Baird contribute feature-length commentary, during which they wax nostalgic together much in the same vein as they do separately in the documentary. (Watch the equally informative doc instead if pressed for time.) Additionally, Jerry Goldsmith submits to a four-part interview on certain musical passages that can be viewed in pieces or together. (Aside: as innovative as his Omen music is, I do feel that it is thrust upon us too relentlessly at times, undercutting the suspense rather than enhancing it.) A goofy, six-minute short featuring the same participants as the doc called "Cause or Coincidence?" (you can imagine...) plus the theatrical trailer and creepy animated menus finish off this respectful SE, packaged alone or with its inferior follow-ups Damien Omen II, Omen III: The Final Conflict, and the made-for-TV Omen IV: The Awakening.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
111 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English Stereo,
English Mono,
French Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

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Published: September, 2000