I guess for me, my historian's background helped me handle that aspect of Bosco. Not that he was always right, but I did at least "get" that part of it even if he didn't always perfectly articulate some of the points.
I'm even debating whether I want to watch Final Conflict all by itself before hearing his commentary or just cut to the chase and hear what he says, but I think I probably need a small refresher of sorts before I do that.
The third film is just as bad as I remembered. There is a lot of dull talk about catastrophic events taking place elsewhere in the world, but we never see them. All we see in this throughline towards the grandiose final battle that is to culminate in a Second Coming is a lot of boring stuff taking place in a staid England (the whole reason to set the action in England makes NO sense. It would have been far more believable to make Damien Thorn President of the US or something genuinely influential on a global scale at this point). The problem carried over from the second film is that duplicating shock moments to justify the fact that this is a "horror" film at the expense of properly developing the through-line is the chief flaw in both sequels. In the first film, the shocks all spring organically from a process of discovery. That isn't the case here. And oh my, what an AWFUL performance by Don Gordon as the simpering private secretary. That should have been Robert Foxworth's character from the second film returning (he is actually referred to once in passing as still active in the corporation).
Don't even get me started on the total ignorance of basic points of Christian doctrine that were camouflaged in the first film to a reasonable degree to let the story shine, but stick out like a sore thumb here.
As for Bosco's commentary, here he lays it on WAY too thick and starts to meander too much about his own personal experiences as a Jew, and then he starts to reveal his own ignorance of how things look from traditional Christian perspectives. His cheap shot at Mel Gibson is uncalled for (and a false characterization of what "Passion Of The Christ" depicts). He also spends way too much time recapping apocryphal literature about Christ as a child (or that posit Him as married to Mary Magdalene) that yes, he acknowledges was rejected by the Church but it was rejected for deeper reasons than that. The problem in his going off on these to the large degree he does is that it takes him completely out of relating these matters to what we're seeing in the film and consequently I started hitting the scan button a bit. To his credit, he makes a course correction towards the end of the film and returns more to the balanced perspective he displayed in the earlier two commentaries. But I did get in this commentary more of an understanding of where he can be taxing for others.
Got my set today, in great condition. Man, that's one sexy box. I may save a re-viewing of the original trilogy until the October Halloween marathon season, but this looks great on the shelf next to SF's Critters boxed set.
Watching the first movie again -- the 4K remaster IS kind of dark, whether its the 4K stream or Shout's Blu-Ray disc. Then again I think the original OMEN has the least to offer on repeat viewing among all three of these movies, as well made as it is.
Breaking: I think Paul was on to something with his analysis of DAMIEN OMEN II.
Jerry Goldsmith certainly scored the bejesus out of this film. That furious, scherzo like opening is awesome and the score itself is like "the original on steroids" to quote a cliched term!
I take kind of the opposite approach in that I think the first movie is the most "rewatchable" in that it offers the most in terms of basic premise and characterization. The first sequel comes off as competent to me, but flawed. The last film is just awful in terms of its plotting on all levels.
It's just personal taste and I get that. The first film is definitely the most technically accomplished -- I wouldn't argue it's not the "best" film -- but just in terms of replayability, it's (as I've written before) kind of a one-trick pony for me, with its main effectiveness based on one's primary viewing. It's as much a mystery as it is a horror film, and once it plays its hand, there's little to sustain terror on repeat viewing. The rest of it -- it's superbly directed but it's all surface with little bite underneath, and Peck comes off as being almost overly sincere in terms of trying to raise the material up.
The sequels have no such pretense about having to establish the concept, so they go straight into the horror, and II does it with a lot of energy in spite of the fact they canned Hodges which probably would've resulted in a better film. Damien isn't an interesting character in THE OMEN, he is in the 2nd film simply because he's older -- and sure I think they could've done more with it, but I think Paul is right when he says it offers an effective variation on the first movie while pushing the concept into an interesting place beyond the simple "devil child" shock element of the original.
But I also admit a lot of my fondness for these movies is because of the music. Goldsmith's scores simply improve and become much more interesting as the material progresses, even if the third movie bungled its potential (I still find it more interesting than rewatching the first film though on repeat viewings). I still like to watch it because of his score and the callbacks to the first movie. It's also stylishly shot, Graham Baker was the big problem there in simply being a poor choice to helm it.
Going back to the first OMEN, I rewatched Shout's interviews, and I also think David Seltzer was right in his summation of Billie Whitelaw's performance. For a movie where there was supposed to be mystery involved in what was going on, she comes off as heavy-handedly "eeeevil" from the second she appears on-screen, despite being written entirely the opposite in his original script. I guess it was one of the few major disagreements he had with Donner.
Whitelaw I agree is way too over the top, and yet I guess from the outset because I was already buying the premise of Damien as the Anti-Christ, I really wasn't seeing the movie so much as a mystery but something that touched more on the profound question for me of, "If I were confronted with this kind of horrific possibility, what would I do and how would I react?" I think it's the fact that "The Omen", in contrast to "The Exorcist" is a very Protestant type of movie that touches on themes that were popular in Evangelical Protestant circles in the 1970s and still are to a lesser degree on the subject of the "End Times" and coming as I do from that background, I'm conditioned more to study the question of how someone would react if presented with this kind of scenario, because to me, the bewilderment of Peck in trying to come to terms with it is just compelling and far more believable than anything I've seen put up by Christian groups in their subpar efforts like the "Left Behind" series.
I can understand your connection with it (it's entirely the opposite for me with The Exorcist), though I just don't think there's really much development of the human drama in THE OMEN. Like Lee Remick's role is very simplistically handled and basically written out of the film after the midway mark (or actually sooner). Other than looking horrified, she just becomes a punching bag for Damien's shenanigans. And Peck does a good job with what he has, but other than babbling "but he's a CHILD!" a bunch of times I didn't think there was much of a heavy moral quandry there -- certainly nothing along the lines of how THE EXORCIST developed its good vs. evil premise and established subtext that places it on a level far above THE OMEN, which also (for me) makes rewatching it rewarding every time out.
In the last few weeks, I've watched the first two Omen movies. Even though I'm sure I've seen them before, it felt like I was watching them for the first tome. I didn't even remember the decapitation scene!
Anyway, I'll offer a third opinion on The Omen vs. The Exorcist based on their religious appeal. I'm a Protestant and prefer The Exorcist which I find to be much more thoughtful and intelligent in its treatment of spiritual themes. It's been more than a year since I last watched it yet I m still thinking about it. The Omen movies, on the other hand, while entertaining as thrillers, seem like they were written by someone who never bothered reading the Bible before they wrote the script.
For one thing several characters who ought to know better call the last book of the New Testament "Revelations" plural instead of "Revelation" singular, its correct title. A pedantic point I grant you but it still bothered me. Or at least made me roll my eyes. And in the first movie, some of the verses they quote in order to prove that Damien is the Antichrist are completely made up! I went through a phase many years ago in which i read several books on the subject of biblical eschatology (the study of the end times.) While I agree with Eric that there is a bit of evangelical end-times thinking in The Omen, it's not presented very well.
THE FINAL CONFLICT is surprising because the central premise is VERY dark -- it's amazing how they show a rash of child murders mostly off-camera in a way that becomes more disturbing every time I see it. It's one of those missed opportunities I like to rewatch, probably subliminally hoping "it's going to be better this time". But with Jerry's score and some nice lensing, it's still entertaining -- provided expectations on Baker's botched handling of the climax are scaled WAY back.
The great bit of trivia I like in DAMIEN OMEN II is when Leo McKern talks about the "FOUR faces of the Anti-Christ" since they were planning on 4 movies, only to scale them back and end it with the 3rd film because DAMIEN underperformed.
David Seltzer's interview is also revealing since he mentions his concept was Damien was going to be an "innocent bad guy" seeing as all this terrible stuff was surrounding him. That went out the window in 2 and they just made the sequels "slasher movies" where Damien looks at someone sideways and does something horrible to them.
Not that he was always right, but I did at least "get" that part of it even if he didn't always perfectly articulate some of the points.
