CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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I never found any of the Omen films to be frightening. They rely too much on standard, boring horror cliches – lightning flashes, mutilation, stupid, cartoon-like accidents, animal attacks, decapitation, unecessarily ugly/”spooky” characters, clueless parents/witnesses, sick, fucked-up clerics, etc. (I nearly fell out of my chair LOL when the priest tries to tell Peck that Damien was born of a wild dog. Talk about a ludicrous and un-scary premise.)
One of Omen’s greatest flaws is that – unlike The Exorcist – it panders to the worst gullibilities of popular and fundamentalist religion. Hence, since the Christmas Star was (fundamentalism says) a real/literal/factual star, so the Second Coming must be heralded by another “real” celestial phenomenon (this time, an alignment). Just as Jesus was “really” born of a “real virgin”, so too Damien’s birth must have a literal, physical parallel (conception by and birth from a jackal)to the literalist understanding of Jesus’ birth. Not to mention the film’s primary conceit that the Book of Revelation and the “666” myth describe both a real, factual, literal AntiChrist and our modern times.
But the trilogy’s most monumental gaffe is that human action is crucial to the AntiChrist’s defeat. This is a completely unscriptural view: even if one fundamentalistically takes the Book of Revelation literally, that book nowhere claims that humans are to have an active part in the “Final Conflict”. Rather, God, Jesus, and the angels are the sole pro-human “comabatants”. Not even the most vicious diatribes of the Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls envision a human participation in God’s vengeful “end time” purges. The Christian Testament holds a similar view.
A corollary to the Omen’s notion of a human intervention in the “end times” is the idea that the plan of an “almighty” God can be defeated if humans cannot stab the AntiChrist with the Daggers of Meggido. If that notion is taken seriously, it means that God is not almighty and is powerless to defeat the AntiChrist except through the good or the bad luck of the human wielders of the Daggers. And the wielders don’t need to be godly or even religiously literate. They just need to 1) have the daggers and 2) successfully strike their target.
Another unpleasant, arbitrary feature of The Omen is the introduction of unspooky “spooky” characters, e.g., goon clerics – sick, weird and/or nasty priests, e.g., the creepy priest with the eye disease who warns Peck of Damien’s dog-birth, or the shockingly wasted performance of Leo McKern as Bugenhagen in Omen II. Compare these nasty characters to the priests of The Exorcist, who though they are human beings struggling with human problems, are nonetheless plain-speaking, rational, reasonably healthy, compassionate, desirous to serve, genuinely concerned with Regan and with Karras… and they don’t carry around dark secrets wrapped up in physical and mental grotesquerie. The Omen, on the other hand, introduces creep-priests because it doesn’t have enough genuine scares to deliver – so it pads the job by planting the script thick with nasty stock characters.
But none of this “stuff and nonsense” is present in The Exorcist. Satan, through the medium of a powerful demon, is already present on earth. No fundamentalistic echoing of scripture is required to establish Satan’s presence and power. No “virgin birth from the split womb of a wild dog” is necessary. The Exorcist’s demon is not constrained by mythical daggers, the efforts of inept/crazy clerics… nor is he particularly susceptible to Christian ritual exorcism.
The Exorcist delivers real horror – with very little borrowing from horror genre cliches. And when it does borrow from cliches (e.g., the sound of wind-blown tree branches as Chris ascends alone to the attic holding a candle) – it delivers sparingly and effectively.
And it delivers stark demonology without the claptrap of popular religion, fundamentalism and outright mythical invention (the Daggers; “666” on Damien’s scalp; comic opera priest-assassins).Except for Jerry Goldsmith’s three outstanding musical scores, the Omen trilogy is just so much junk. The Omen and its sequels are not in The Exorcist’s league by any stretch of imagination, normal or febrile. Not by a long shot. Not by light years.
I tend to agree, Captain. Merrin is the “bookends” of both movie and book. Even the doubting Karras is led to think that maybe Merrin can do something where Karras failed…
Oops, per my original post: Ilya Kuriakin in Man from Uncle was played by David McCallum (sp?), not “McCullough” – sorry about that.
Could be, but even with only two parts, an “intermission” of even one day might dilute the suspense…
Trouble with a miniseries: how can suspense and dramatic tension be sustained over hours and days of broadcast? Will diluting the story in multiple episodes destroy the necessary intensity?
Yeah, as a demon I would also guess that Pazuzu does not have a native form or state. Presumably he is a nonmaterial spirit being and only takes on form in order to manifest on “this plane”, and/or distorts the human forms of those he possesses (the malevolently-changed facial expressions of Regan, Kokumo, the lady doctor in The Beginning, Che-Che, etc.) Hence, he can manifest as winged Pazuzu or as white-faced Howdy, or in any other form that would suit his purposes. But it will be nice to see MIKE’s full-body drawing of Pazuzu to see how he interprets it.
Nice interpretation, MIKE, he looks powerful yet somehow restrained, like a demon who has supernatural potency but is still under divine interdict…
Yeah, this brand of fundy sees Satan behind every rock. Far from utilizing the Catholic Church’s stringent criteria for making a _prudent judgment_ about possession, Larson and crew are so hopelessly uncritical that they see as “demonic” everything from nervous habits, drinking/drug/sex problems, the type of TV, movies, books that one watches and reads, etc., as “Satanic”. They employ circular reasoning, e.g., “I know he was possessed because he looked at me in a way that was… Satanic!” They magnify normal character flaws into direct, literal “possession”. Then they aggravate the symptoms by telling the person that s/he is possessed, and by subjecting their victim to “exorcism”.
The pity is that the great unwashed, uncritical American public will probably tune into the program and think they’re getting something worthwhile, something that has documentary verisimilitude. Our ignorant times only encourage Bob Larson and crew to flourish in the soil of Unreason.
Another warning sign is that Larson is advertised as “an expert on cults”. This usually means that the “expert” in question has several religious and/or political axes to grind, making it a forgone conclusion that “expert testimony” is, in all probability, itself as “cultish” as the “cults” it claims to expose.
Doubtless Bob Larson is one of those fundies who think that non-Christian religions are “satanic”, and this of course would include “cults” ( a pejorative term for new and alternative religious movements ). And, what with folks getting “possessed” all the time, even in fundy churches, just think of the business opportunities for Larson in the Satan-rich fields of the CULTS! Makes your skin crawl, eh. Don’t look at Bob Larson the wrong way – he’ll exorcize the Hell out of you!
