The Omen (1976) and its sequels

Omen II and III and imperfect but enjoyable follow-ups if you're interested in Damien growing up and into his role as Satan incarnate. Your mileage may vary, but I think II is the superior sequel. You still get the creepy kid stuff and the death scenes are kicked up a few notches. III is good but kind of plodding.

Don't bother with IV or the remake. Both are virtually worthless.

Only saw the original but really enjoyed it. Something I appreciate about horror films from that era is that they took evil seriously w/o going full camp.

The first R-rated movie I saw, at the ripe old age of eleven. Truly a classic that still holds up today. The first two sequels are worthy follow-ups but don't come close to the original.

I don't care much for The Omen (1976).

Besides the score and a few creepy scenes, I am indifferent to the movie. I don't think it has very effective atmosphere, I think Gregory Peck is miscast and the story isn't all that interesting. The movie is also missing an emotional core, a reason to care about what is happening.

6/10

The second one isn't bad. William Holden, Lee Grant and Robert Foxworth are really good! The third one - forget it!

I remember sitting in a large theater (this is before they all went multiplex) in the dark with my sister watching it. It was so unsettling that (this is in the days where you could smoke in movie theaters) we were trying to light our cigarettes, and our hands were shaking so bad, we couldn't do it! Terrifying!

The Omen is really well made in every way and Gregory Peck is perfectly cast. The plot is quite mechanical and often predictable, but Donner's effective and classy directing makes it work.

Damien: Omen II is quite good, but it is easy to notice that there was a change of director since the military academy scenes are much more elegantly directed, while most of the rest is good but more workmanlike. There are some really nice ideas, like that creepy wall they found, but overall it's a bit too slasher-like, some characters are there only to be killed and so on. The boy playing Damien is really good and of course there's Lance Henriksen is a small but important role.

The Final Conflict, well ok, Neil is good and it has really strong opening scenes, some good ideas and few really good scares, like the burned baby. The plot doesn't make much sense though and The Antichrist often seems more bark than bite. His philosophical monologues about the nature of evil are nowhere near as deep as the writers probably thought. However what really makes this "final conflict" so disappointing is that the way the monks are trying to kill him breaks the rules of the series. The Final Conflict isn't exactly bad, but it could have been so much better with some rewrites.

The dog in Omen 3 making mothers burn their babies with a hot iron--you don't see that anymore (though the alien in Alien vs Predator 2 injecting the pregnant woman with alien eggs was pretty horrifying and then the hospital blows up too).

To get the kid for the Omen they told him to kick Donner as hard as he could in the shin and the kid was so enthusiastic for doing it he had to be pulled away, and then they knew they found the right kid.

Killing little kids has always been very rare and a bit of a taboo in US mainstream horror, I don't think The Final Conflict was a watershed one way or another.

Italian horror films have some kid getting killed in about every third production. Cultural differences.

Never heard that story about casting "Damien" before. Well, everyone knows that a child actor's real personality must be close to that of the character he is going to play. There is only so much acting that a kid can do. So how do you cast a young antichrist? I suppose that's one way of doing it...