Movies You May Not Like: The Omen (1976)

So next on the boss's list?  The Omen.  Not the 2006 version, but rather the 1976 version with Gregory Peck.

All in all its a pretty uncomplicated film.  The movie opens in an Italian hospital where a woman has just given birth to a stillborn child (thankfully we do not see this).  The woman's husband, this dude played by Gregory Peck, decides at the urging of a Priest to adopt a child and raise him in place of the stillborn babe.  "Your wife
'a, she never know'a the difference'a, capice?"  So he does it.

In the fun filled two hour journey that follows we learn three things:

1.  The child is the Anti-Christ (even though Johnny Rotten would, a couple years later, claim that title for himself).

2.  The dude must kill the child in a Church to save the world.

3.  If you get your head cut off by a pane of glass that has fallen from an out of control glass truck, its just so cool that it will replay three times.  Three.  No more, no less.

My boss at the crackerjack factory assured me it was frightening, but I did not find it to be especially scary (and believe me, I don't really do scary movies).

But this film is rather creepy and the final scene where the dude (I think his name is Robert) is preparing to kill the evil Satan child Damien is very disturbing.  Damien is 5, after all.  He doesn't realize he is the Anti-Christ yet, and he won't know that until college after a really bad experience with jungle juice forces himself to take a good hard look at himself in the mirror and ask himself "Who are you, Damien?  Who are you?  What in the hell am I doing in this place?  Why am I majoring in coal mining when I know that inside of me there is an interpretive dancer just waiting to burst out?".  No, as his dad lays his body on the altar, he is just a scared, confused little boy.  Even though I know this child is the Anti-Christ and is going to bring about the Armageddon, well, I still found myself saying "Don't do it, The Dude whose name I can't remember!  I would rather take the  consequences of letting the Anti-Christ live than see you kill that poor little boy."

Well, guess what?  It's a happy ending!  The British police (did I mention that The Dude was the American ambassador to my adopted homeland?) shoot The Dude and the little boy goes to live with The Dude's best friend, the POTUS.

That's right.  The President Of The United States of America.

And sometimes, as we have seen, the son of  POTUS can one day become the POTUS himself.  Maybe that is what The Omen is all about.  Be afraid America.  Be very afraid.  If Damien was 5 in 1976, he's now 36 years old.  A little too young to run for office just yet.  But soon.  Very soon....

Perhaps more frightening is Gregory Peck's left eyebrow.  Good god man, he can cock that eyebrow.  Gives me goosebumps it does.