The Omen: Pentology [DVD]

The Omen sequels and its remake are a dispiriting bunch, but this set collects all three original films, the dire TV movie and the weak 2006 remake to make for a cost-effective way for completists to complete their collection.

1976's The Omen was easily the best of the wave of Devil movies to come along in the wake of The Exorcist's success, relying less on alternating a naturalistic style with shockingly graphic setpieces but instead putting its faith in a beautifully constructed screenplay that mixed a modern interpretation of the Book of Revelations with a changeling story. Like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby it puts a Satanic spin on parental fears - in this case the cuckoo in the nest and a mother's fear of her own child. Despite the still impressively spectacular deaths, it's less a horror film and more of a supernatural thriller played straight as Gregory Peck's ambassador is gradually led to believe that his troublesome illegally adopted four-year-old son's real dad might just have horns and a tail and be pretty handy with a pitchfork. Although there are still signs that somewhere along the way the film was aimed for an ambiguity that it never really achieves (is the brat really the AntiChrist or just a very naughty boy? Is Peck seeing the truth or going mad?) Its strength is that it plays its premise absolutely straight. It's helped by some fine casting - Lee Remick, Billie Whitelaw, Leo McKern, Patrick Troughton and especially David Warner as the cynical paparazzi whose photos give the film its title and provide its best chills - and is extremely well directed by Richard Donner, who displays a magnificent use of the Scope frame that leaves the film rather diminished in panned-and-scanned TV outings, while Stuart Baird's excellent editing combines with Jerry Goldsmith's sinister score to make the most of the material. It was a tough act to follow, but even so it's a shame just how far its successors fell short...

William Holden, realising too late he missed the boat in turning down the lead in the original, stands in for Peck as the unfortunate ambassador's equally unfortunate brother who's not exactly quick to catch on that there might be something wrong with his nephew as the body count of friends and family rises in Damien - Omen II. Sadly it's a pretty standard by-the-numbers sequel, part rehash but mostly an episodic collection of mostly uninspired killings. Someone suspects Damien, gets killed horribly. Another person suspects Damien, gets killed horribly. Another person... Repeat for 110 minutes, throw in a rushed climax then roll end titles and count the money. As the original's screenwriter noted, it's more a movie about a serial killer despatching anyone who looks at him funny than a modern-day version of the Book of Revelations.

Not that it's entirely without ideas - the teenaged Damien isn't too thrilled to learn his destiny at first and, in the film's most effective scene, finds himself failing to win over his cousin (Lucas Donat, generally outshining the Satanic Jonathan Scott-Taylor); and that part of the groundwork being laid for Armageddon involves developing GM crops to control Third World countries is surprisingly prescient, but these ideas are regarded pretty much as filler between the setpieces. Sadly even the best of these - a drowning under the ice and a doctor being sliced in half in a faulty lift - don't bear comparison with David Warner's memorable exit in the original.

It's not quite I Was a Teenage Anti-Christ (though even Goldsmith's score has a disco drive to it this time round), but it feels every bit as much an Omen rip-off as any of the drive-in and grindhouse movies that followed in its wake, albeit on a bigger budget. There's a decent roll call of supporting players, from old Hollywood stalwarts Lew Ayres and Sylvia Sidney to future straight-to-video staple Lance Henriksen, and Leo McKern makes a brief unbilled return alongside an equally unbilled Ian Hendry in the Mike Hodges-directed prologue. Most of the military academy scenes were also shot by Hodges before the series really did turn out to be cursed for him at least: he was fired two weeks in to the picture and replaced by Don Taylor. Some of the best footage in the picture was from Hodges shoot, but he took too long getting it for producer Harvey Bernhard's liking (on the audio commentary he gripes at length about how long Hodges took setting up Damien's striking entrance seen through the flames of a garden bonfire). The end result is professionally made but too much of an episodic rehash to hold up as well as the original.

At one time intended to be a quartet of films before the falling box-office dictated three films might be a sounder investment, the series reached its devastating anticlimax with The Final Conflict. Returning the story to London and a more classical look (albeit on a visibly lower budget), Damien's graduated to his stepfather's old job as US ambassador but, rather than setting about the serious business of Armageddon, spends most of his time giving interviews, romancing Lisa Harrow's BBC reporter, talking about the nature of evil and worrying about the newly reborn but still in hiding Christ-child sapping his strength while Rossano Brazzi (the film's sole representative of Old Hollywood) and his less-than-magnificent seven monks try to kill him. A modern-day Massacre of the Innocents, a bit of buggery and the odd moment of inspired blasphemy notwithstanding, Damien's counterfeit kingdom is pretty unimpressive and his plan for Armageddon less than half-hearted. As if symptomatic of the film's lethargy, it breaks the franchise's own rules - now it only takes a single dagger in the back to kill him rather than all seven - and even rearranges the chronology (despite being made in 1981, the film alludes to the story happening in 1978). Throw in some limp killings and a terrible ending and it's no surprise this didn't trouble theatres for long.

It's not a complete loss, though. Sam Neill makes a charismatic Damien in his first major leading role, making it all the more disappointing that he didn't have a better showcase. Graham Baker's direction is often better than his material, showing a good eye for Scope composition and the harsher parts of the British landscape (though his audio commentary is so sparse he might as well not have bothered). Better still, Jerry Goldsmith outdoes his earlier efforts to conclude the trilogy with one of the finest scores ever written, part grand opera, part Biblical epic, with a grandeur and majesty mostly lacking from the script. And the big dog is back.

Skipping the short-lived in-name-only The Omen TV series in the presumed hope that people will forget it ever existed, Omen IV: The Awakening is a strikingly inept TV movie that's particularly bad but sadly not laughably so (though the spinning inverted crosses and some incompetently staged carnage at a psychic fair do provide a couple of smirks). This time round it's a little girl who's adopted by a politician and his wife, but despite one psychic claiming "This is the aura of a Borgia, not a little girl!" she's more bratty than demonic - Damien wouldn't have had to whack a bully with a lunchpail. Cue some half-hearted killings, absurd plot twists and new age crystal guff replacing the Apocalyptic scriptures of the original trilogy, all rendered even worse by an almost uniformly dreadful cast. Michael Learned adds some much needed competence as a private eye, elevating the film at least to the level of mediocrity whenever he's on screen by the simple expedient of being the only cast member who can actually act.

Once again the original director (Dominique Othenin-Girard) got fired for being too tardy and - bizarrely - for wanting to make the film more horrific (it was finished by Jorge Montesi, whose priority seems to be keeping it on budget and on schedule no matter how tedious the results). Certainly the film's most effective scene is Othenin-Girard's work, a striking moment where decaying Christmas carollers appear singing the lyrics to Goldsmith's Ave Satani before one character meets their spectacular end. Perhaps the most horrific thing about the resulting TV movie is how atrociously overscored it all is by Jonathan Scheffer, channelling late Bernard Herrmann more than Jerry Goldsmith's original themes and throwing in some bizarre circus music cues as if he was holding a fire sale of old comedy scores. Bad in the worst way.

For the first reel or so the 2006 remake of The Omen looks like a fairly promising reworking of the original, throwing in a few new spins and a better exit for the incumbent ambassador to Great Britain than Damien's last big screen outing managed. But while it initially appears better than serial remaker John Moore's dire Flight of the Phoenix, things start to go wrong with the first nanny's exit, which seems purely arbitrary here: where the original briefly established a moment of maternal jealousy that could be interpreted as a threat, here the poor girl doesn't even get a proper establishing shot. Unfortunately it's all too symptomatic of the way he doesn't take the time to establish atmosphere or construct a decent setpiece. Where Richard Donner went all-out to elevate the material in the original with a strong visual sense and a dedication to verisimilitude, Moore directs without flair or panache, something the grotty cinematography merely underlines. By the half hour point it feels like you're watching a film made by slave labor in one of Stalin's work camps, soullessly meeting a quota of footage to meet the 6/6/6 release date and earn their meagre portion of cold cabbage soup.

The casting veers between the dismal and the catastrophic. Read more ›

I have to admit that I'm a big fan of the original film: 'The Omen' (1976). It is quite psychological and centred on the unravelling of the perfect, controlled lives of the central couple. It also touches on the hypocrisy of the apparently solid, strong central character Robert Thorn (played by Gregory Peck). As such it doesn't depend on gore or flashy effects. Many of the performances, like the Satanic Nanny, are understated but filled with menace.

This pentology is not just about the first film, however, it is pretty much exhaustive. Not only does it have the first, second and third film but the remake of the first and made for TV film, 'The Awakening'. If that is not enough you get alternate endings, a featurette on the Omen Curse, the omen music and alternative commentaries (amongst much more). If you are not an expert on 'The Omen' after watching all this then something is wrong with you.

I learned a lot by viewing the bundle. I didn't realise how comparatively small the budget was on the first movie (two and a half million US$) and how the money made had helped to finance George Lucas! The Curse or Coincidence featurette was quite scary. Sometimes I wonder if evil is just an absence of good or a positive (if that's the right word!) force in its own right. Planes getting struck by lightning, accidents during filming - it's all pretty creepy and thought provoking.

The price seems a lot to fork out but really when you consider how much material is here you are getting a pretty good deal.

Received the box set today and haven't actually seen the DVD movies yet, however I were slightly worried if all the DVD's from the box-set would all be in widescreen as I wanted them to be, and I found it annoying that no aspect ratio information were given on the Amazon.co.uk site.
So just in case others like I should wish for more information then I can infom you that it on the box-set says that all main features has english subtitles for the hearing impaired and more specifically for each DVD movie it says :

Omen I (2 disc, 30th Anniversary) is in approximately aspect ratio 2.35:1 and sound : English 5.1 and English 2.0 stereo
Omen II is in approximately aspect ratio 2.35:1 and sound : English 2.0 surround
Omen III is in approximately aspect ratio 2.35:1 and sound : English 2.0 surround
Omen IV is in approximately aspect ratio 1.85:1 and sound : English 4.0 stereo
Omen 666 is in approximately aspect ratio 1.85:1 and sound : English 5.1, English 5.1 DTS, English 5.1 Audio Description

I missed the above specific information, hope that you can use it for purchase decision making.

Regards