Every 70s Movie: david warner

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Sunday, July 10, 2016

A Doll’s House (1973, UK) & A Doll’s House (1973, USA)

In an odd coincidence, two films of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House arrived in 1973, one in theaters and one on television. Both take place in 19th-century Norway, where housewife Nora revels upon hearing that her husband, uptight banker Torvald, has earned a major promotion, because the change marks an end to the family’s monetary woes. When Torvald fires a subordinate named Krogstad, the disgruntled man blackmails Nora with evidence that she once forged documents for a bank loan. The ensuing melodrama reveals what little respect Torvald has for his wife—hence the title, which refers to men treating women as playthings. Given the story’s ultimate theme of a woman’s self-realization, it’s obvious why the material seemed timely during the early feminist era.

The British version, ironically enough, has American roots. It’s a filmed record of a Broadway production that was adapted from Ibsen by the celebrated UK playwright Christopher Hampton. The Broadway show featured revered British actress Claire Bloom in a tour-de-force performance, and Bloom re-creates her meticulous work in the movie. Director Patrick Garland largely ignores any cinematic possibilities in the play, opting for intimate scenes taking place on fully dressed approximations of the stage production’s sets. At his worst, Garland slips into bland cuts back and forth between flat close-ups, particularly during the final, lengthy showdown between Nora and Torvald. What Garland’s A Doll House lacks in visual imagination, however, it makes up for in dramatic firepower.

Bloom runs the gamut from frivolous to manic to regal, and her costar—the sublime Anthony Hopkins—imbues Torvald with a mixture of inflated ego and repressed desperation. Playing key supporting roles are Denholm Elliot, bitter and cruel as the maligned Krogstand, and Ralph Richardson, elegantly sad as Nora’s aging friend, Dr. Rank. One can’t help but wonder what a filmmaker more adept at stage-to-screen adaptations, perhaps Sidney Lumet, could have done with the raw material of these finely tuned performances, but at least theater fans can savor great work forever. Plus, in any incarnation, Ibsen’s prescient notions about women liberating themselves pack a punch. Consider this passage from the British film: After Torvald exclaims, “No man would sacrifice his honor for love,” Nora replies, “Millions of women have.”

Seeing as how Jane Fonda was a fierce combatant on the front lines of the ’70s culture wars, it’s not surprising she felt Ibsen’s statement merited a fresh adaptation. Alas, she proved unlucky twice. First, she clashed with director Joseph Losey, and second, she completed her project after the UK version had already reached theaters. That’s why the Fonda film landed on TV—producers rightly estimated the limits of the public’s appetite for this material. In nearly every way, Losey’s take on A Doll’s House is inferior to the Bloom/Hopkins version, even though Losey’s comparatively sophisticated camerawork creates more visual interest than Garland’s stodgy frames.

The big problem is that the casting never clicks. Fonda gives an adequate performance, with intense moments of fervor and physicality weighted down by stilted readings of classical-style dialogue. Viewed in context, she’s an outlier. Fine European actors including Trevor Howard (as Dr. Rank) and David Warner (as Torvald) seem natural delivering reams of ornate dialogue while stuffed into period costumes, but none of them truly connects with Fonda—her performance exists in isolation from the rest of the picture. Plus, since the gangly Warner somewhat resembles a frequent Fonda costar, it’s impossible not to picture Donald Sutherland in the Torvald role and wonder what that dynamic might have been like. That said, Edward Fox is excellent in the Krogstand role, radiating predatory heat. Yet the thing that should have supercharged this spin on A Doll’s House, Fonda’s offscreen passion for gender equality, makes key moments feel more like stand-alone political speeches instead of organic elements of interpersonal confrontation.

A Doll’s House (UK): GROOVY

A Doll’s House (USA): FUNKY

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Silver Bears (1978)

Featuring noteworthy participants in front of and behind the camera, the international-caper comedy Silver Bears should work. Every so often, however, talented people miss the mark for reasons that defy comprehension, resulting in disappointments like this one. Silver Bears isn’t a disaster, and nobody in the movie does anything embarrassing, although costar Cybill Shepherd’s performance is iffy. Yet Silver Bears is inert. Despite being cowritten by one of Hollywood’s pithiest wordsmiths and despite starring the reliable Michael Caine, Silver Bears is too confusing, too silly, and too uneven to merit any reaction other than indifference.

Here are the broad strokes of the convoluted storyline. English swindler “Doc” Fletcher (Caine) gets American mobster Joe Fiore (Martin Balsam) to buy a Swiss bank, using down-on-his-luck Italian aristocrat Gianfranco di Siracusa (Louis Jourdan) as a front. Gianfranco then convinces “Doc” to invest in an Iranian silver mine owned by Gianfranco’s cousins, Agha (David Warner) and Shireen (Stéphene Audran), as a means of bolstering the bank’s assets. This brings the group into the orbit of UK mogul Charlie Cook (Charles Gray), who helps control the world’s silver market. Later, American banker Henry Foreman (Joss Ackland) hears the Swiss bank is onto something big, so he sends underling Donald Luckman (Tom Smothers) to buy the Swiss bank. Donald brings his wife, Debbie (Shepherd), along for the ride, and soon “Doc” romances Debbie as part of an elaborate scheme to defraud nearly every other character in the storyline.

Cowriter Peter Stone, who achieved caper-cinema immortality with the Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn romp Charade (1963), sprinkles an amusing line here and there, since he presumably was hired to embellish an existing script by Paul Erdman. Alas, even Stone’s delicate touch isn’t enough to compensate for bewildering story elements, one-dimensional characters, and unbelievable plot twists. Shepherd’s character alone is a tangle of contradictory behaviors, because she’s mousy at one moment and promiscuous at the next. Caine and Jourdan try to slide by on charm, but the minute either actor steps offscreen, it becomes apparent that whatever he just said or did was nonsensical. Still, the assortment of actors in Silver Bears is beguilingly random. Charles Gray from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)? David Warner from Straw Dogs (1971)? Tom—make that Tommy—Smothers??? Overseeing the whole mess is Czechoslovakian director Ivan Passer, who paces scenes briskly but shoots them without any special style, a problem exacerbated by Claude Bolling’s dorky musical score.

Silver Bears: FUNKY

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

1980 Week: The Island

Despite the massive success of two films based on his books, Jaws (1975) and The Deep (1977), all it took to derail the building of Peter Benchley into a Hollywood brand name was the colossal failure of The Island. In fact, The Island did horrible things to the careers of nearly everyone involved, including star Michael Caine and director Michael Ritchie. Even though it was made on a significant budget of $22 million, the silly, turgid, and violent movie is little more than a second-rate exploitation flick, and the plot is so far-fetched as to border on camp. The “hero” of the piece is a prickly UK-born journalist named Blair Maynard (Caine), who travels to the Caribbean in order to solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Inexplicably, given the possible dangers of the mission, Maynard brings along his estranged young son, Justin (Jeffrey Frank), hoping for some family bonding. The intrepid reporter soon learns that an island in the middle of the Triangle is home to an ancient band of French pirates, who have been attacking ships for centuries, building an insular society from plundered goods and perpetuating their line by inbreeding with a handful of females. The leader of the gang is a ruthless criminal named Nau (David Warner), who kidnaps Blair’s son and brainwashes the boy into becoming some sort of heir apparent. None of this makes much sense. Yet the ludicrous nature of The Island’s plot wouldn’t matter all that much if the movie provided thrills. Unfortunately, Ritchie was asleep at the wheel, filming events in the flat visual style of a ’70s TV show and letting performers veer into cartoony excess. Caine, for instance, delivers one of his patented “when all else fails, scream” performances. The film’s costumes and sets look cheap and random, with no overriding design aesthetic connecting the elements, and the story’s decent into Straw Dogs-style malarkey about a civilized man turning savage feels trite and unsavory. Worst of all, the movie’s dialogue is often alarmingly stupid. (There’s a reason Benchley’s original scripts for Jaws and The Deep were rewritten by professional screenwriters, but at least he shouldered the blame for this one alone.) Ultimately, the best thing about The Island may be the film’s slam-bang poster, which promises supernatural excitement that is not present in the movie itself.

The Island: LAME

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

A quasi-comedic character study of a loner who builds a tiny empire in a barren stretch of Old West frontier, The Ballad of Cable Hogue would seem to be director Sam Peckinpah’s gentlest film. Yet beneath the amiable surface of the movie lurk some of the dark themes that permeate all of Peckinpah’s work. This may be a ballad, but it’s played in a minor key.

Jason Robards stars as Cable Hogue, a schemer who gets separated from his partners in crime while traversing a grim American desert. After wandering the wastelands for several days, Hogue stumbles across a tiny reservoir that marks an underground water source. Replenished, Hogue stakes a claim on the water, traveling into a nearby town to christen his finding Cable Springs—the only stop for refreshment between two remote wagon-trail posts. As the movie progresses, Hogue forms a bizarre surrogate family. Hogue’s first new friend is the Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloane (David Warner), a priest unaffiliated with any formal church and unencumbered by vows of celibacy; like Hogue, Sloane is a self-made maverick. Hogue also bonds with Hildy (Stella Stevens), a prostitute. Especially after she’s shunned by disapproving townsfolk and seeks refuge with Hogue, Hildy grows to love her ragged companion.

Much of the picture comprises cutesy domestic scenes of the couple playing house in the wilderness. These peculiar sequences mine unlikely (and sometimes ineffective) humor from the juxtaposition of scruffy Robards and sexy Stevens. And while Hildy may be one of the most deeply explored female characters in Peckinpah’s oeuvre, it’s hard to overlook the leering way the director films his leading lady—not only is Stevens repeatedly nude as she pops in and out of bathtubs, but Peckinpah pulls jackass moves like zooming into closeups of Stevens’ cleavage. Yes, the camerawork is meant to mimic Hogue’s male gaze, but restraint would have helped.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a strange movie, bouncing from slapstick to tragedy, and the talent differential between the leading actors results in herky-jerky storytelling. Every time Robards locks into a groove of poetic melancholy, Stevens intrudes with the numbing normalcy of her one-dimensional screen persona. Yet one could argue that Stevens’ limitations suit Peckinpah’s theme of Hogue being a soulful man for whom there’s no real place in the cruel world; perhaps Hildy’s vapid beauty is meant to represent the only type of happiness an eccentric like Hogue can reasonably expect. Warner’s elegant oddness—closer on the talent spectrum to Robards’ vibe than Stevens’—complicates the experience further.

Still, even if the middle of the movie is undisciplined, thanks to episodic storytelling and mismatched elements, The Ballad of Cable Hogue gets points for ending well, because Peckinpah eventually brings the narrative around to a favorite theme—the passing of the Old West upon the arrival of crass modernity. Therefore, if nothing else, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is an interesting example of an artist experimenting with new techniques. The picture may not work, per se, but it was a bold movie—and, of course, the fact that it actually got made demonstrates Peckinpah’s incredible tenacity.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue: GROOVY

Monday, March 4, 2013

Straw Dogs (1971)

Director Sam Peckinpah liked to play rough, whether he was bombarding viewers with slow-motion bloodshed or defying good taste by showcasing the terrible behavior of evil characters, but in many ways he never put audiences through more abuse than he did with Straw Dogs. A complicated movie with a simple story, the picture is frequently misunderstood as a revenge tale, but a close examination of its storyline reveals something more devious; the motivation for the horrific violence the protagonist commits during the film’s climax is ambiguous, layered, and provocative.

Dustin Hoffman stars as David Sumner, an American mathematician who receives a grant to work in a remote English village that happens to be the hometown of his wife, Amy (Susan George). We meet the Sumners at the same time we meet the residents of the strange little village, so in just a few moments, Peckinpah and co-writer David Zelag Goodman establish how woefully out of place David is in a clannish, working-class enclave. Amy, meanwhile, is quite literally right at home; she’s also young and unsophisticated enough to think she can get away with flirtatious behavior around local young men who drink themselves stupid at the neighborhood pub every night. Out of boredom and a childish desire to be the center of attention in her household, Amy wears revealing clothes and even, at one point, parades naked in front of local men who are working on the remote farmhouse she and David have rented.

Meanwhile, an adult simpleton named Henry Niles (David Warner) lurks around the village, taunted by everyone because of some past offense in which he menaced a young girl. As the film progresses, these divergent elements—combined with a running trope of hyped-up young men, led by Charlie Venner (Del Henney), lusting after Amy and openly mocking David—come together during a bloody siege that comprises nearly the entire last half-hour of the movie.

Often cited in academic studies of cinematic violence, Straw Dogs is ostensibly a meditation on the idea of a civilized man pushed to savagery by circumstance, but it’s the nature of those circumstances that makes the film so thorny. It’s giving nothing away to say that Amy is assaulted partway through the movie, since the attack is foreshadowed almost from the first scene. However, people who talk about Straw Dogs often suggest the violence David subsequently commits is a response to his wife’s violation. It’s not, because Amy never tells her husband about the crime. Instead, David’s descent into brutality is triggered by random events. The implication, then, is that David was churning with animalistic fury all along, and that he was, psychically speaking, waiting for an excuse to unleash his inner demons.

This nuance helps define Straw Dogs as a deeply cynical film, because if Peckinpah had simply told a story about a man responding to an unspeakable crime, the picture would have become something like Death Wish (1974). Straw Dogs is entirely different. It’s an unpleasant film to watch, of course—there’s nothing fun about two hours of abuse, murder, rape, and excruciating tension—and the film has been debated and dissected so many times that whether it actually delivers meaningful insights is best left for individual viewers to decide. What’s beyond question, though, is that Straw Dogs represents Peckinpah’s artistry at its most forceful—and perverse.

Plus, the movie contains one of Hoffman’s nerviest performances, a meticulous balancing act in which Hoffman charts tiny, moment-to-moment changes in his character’s psyche while also giving himself over to scenes in which his character loses control. Leading lady George is hopelessly outclassed by Hoffman (a talent disparity that actually serves the story), and the English players portraying the locals all contribute salty flavors. Warner, whose performance is uncredited, stands out with his disquieting mixture of innocence and menace.

Straw Dogs: GROOVY

Monday, November 28, 2011

From Beyond the Grave (1974)

Amicus Productions’ long series of horror-anthology flicks ended anticlimactically with From Beyond the Grave, which comprises a quartet of uninspired stories connected by visits to a mysterious shop selling haunted antiques. Rightfully regarded as a second-rate competitor to Hammer Films, Amicus pulled from the same talent pool as Hammer—that’s Peter Cushing playing the ghoulish proprietor of the antique shop—but Amicus’ pictures rarely achieved the same level of gonzo energy as the best Hammer flicks. From Beyond the Grave seems particularly enervated, even by Amicus’ low standards; the script is dull, the performances are stiff, and the shocks are trite.

Each story begins when a character buys a curio from Cushing’s musty shop, and the customers who try to swindle Cushing seal their fates. In the first story, “The Gatecrasher,” a collector (David Warner) purchases a mirror haunted by a spirit who needs flesh for sustenance, so the collector kills women as a means of bringing the spirit back to life. The usually lively Warner gives a numbingly sober performance in this by-the-numbers morality tale. The most laborious story, “An Act of Kindness,” features a repressed businessman (Ian Bannen) lying to impress a friendly street peddler (Donald Pleasence), then savoring the way the peddler treats him like royalty. The businessman eventually seduces the peddler’s strange daughter (Angela Pleasence), leading to a bloody turn of events. “An Act of Kindness” is confusing and contrived, though it’s a kick to see eccentric character actor Pleasence playing scenes with his real-life lookalike daughter.

The mood of From Beyond the Grave lightens for “The Elemental,” which concerns a husband and wife hiring a dotty psychic (Margaret Leighton) to dispatch a mischievous spirit, but after a mildly amusing climax filled with flying objects and Leighton’s comic flamboyance, the tale turns needlessly dark. In the final story, “The Door,” a writer (Ian Ogilvy) buys a door that provides a gateway to the realm of an undead murderer; although this story features some interesting images, like that of the door bleeding when it’s struck by an axe, “The Door” feels redundant after “The Gatecrasher.”

Hardcore Brit-horror fans will undoubtedly find enjoyable distractions in the ironic plot twists and (mild) gore; furthermore, director Kevin Connor presents the picture with a palatable sort of workmanlike competence, and the cast, which also includes Lesley-Anne Down in a decorative role, is solid. Still, From Beyond the Grave is more stultifying than horrifying. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

From Beyond the Grave: FUNKY

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Time After Time (1979)

Boasting an outlandish premise culled form the worlds of history and literature, Time After Time marked the auspicious directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer, who mined similar territory as the novelist and screenwriter of The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1976). Whereas the earlier film imagined a relationship between Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes, Time After Time imagines one between legendary science-fiction author H.G. Wells and notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper.

The movie begins in Victorian England, when H.G. (Malcolm McDowell) discovers that one of his society friends is actually the Ripper. Eager to evade capture, Jack (David Warner) steals the time machine that wells built the basement of his London flat—in Time After Time, H.G. isn’t just a fantasist but also an inventor. Honor-bound to bring his onetime friend to justice, H.G. chases Jack through time to 1979 San Francisco. Once there, the 19th-century gentleman tries to navigate 20th-century culture, with sweetly overwhelmed bank clerk Amy (Mary Steenburgen) serving as his guide and eventual love interest.

Working from an imaginative story by Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes, Meyer demonstrates all of his storytelling strengths: clever literary references, pithy light comedy, and pure escapist fun. Despite its preposterous storyline, Time After Time is thoroughly engrossing, an old-fashioned yarn with the classic formula of drama, romance, and thrills. The love story between Amy and H.G. is charming, because he’s a relic unprepared for the concept of women’s lib, and she’s a modern woman who swoons at his traditional manners. We believe they were meant for each other, just like we believe that Jack represents an even greater menace in modern times than he did in his own era: As he says in one of the picture’s best lines, “Ninety years ago I was a freak—today I’m an amateur.”

Warner is elegantly menacing, creating several moments of genuine suspense because we believe him capable of horrific acts, and McDowell thrives in one of his few romantic leading roles. Plus, if his rapport with Steenburgen seems particularly convincing, there’s a reason: The costars married after completing the movie and were together for a decade. In another interesting footnote, Meyer recycled some unused bits of culture-clash comedy when he wrote the present-day scenes of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), which placed the crew of the Enterprise in, you guessed it, modern-day San Francisco.

Time After Time: GROOVY

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Cross of Iron (1977)

Gonzo filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was already starting to lose his creative way when he made the World War II actioner Cross of Iron. By the mid-’70s, he had become such a substance-abusing hellraiser that his productions were nightmares for nearly everyone involved, and Cross of Iron represents his last hurrah as a serious filmmaker. (He cranked out two more features before his death, but both were embarrassments.) As chaotic and overindulgent as the man who made it, Cross of Iron is also clever, disturbing, and provocative, a flawed psychological drama that could have become a masterpiece had it been executed with more discipline.

Based on a novel by Willi Heinrich and penned by a trio of writers including Hollywood veteran Julius Epstein (Casablanca), the picture follows the adventures of Sgt. Rolf Steiner (James Coburn), a valiant German soldier fighting on the bloody Russian front. Brave, smart, and respected by his men, Steiner would be officer material if he didn’t have a problem with authority, so he quickly gets into a battle of wills with his new commander, Capt. Stransky (Maximilian Schell). A pompous Prussian aristocrat who lacks combat experience, Stransky is an ambitious monster determined to win an Iron Cross by any means necessary. When Stransky tries to claim credit for a heroic charge that was actually led by another man, Steiner emerges as the only eyewitness who can disprove Stransky’s boast, so Stransky abandons Steiner’s platoon in enemy territory when the Germans call a general retreat from the front.

And that’s just one of the threads in this complex movie: There’s also a subplot about Steiner adopting a young Russian boy as his platoon’s ward, an intense sequence in which Steiner convalesces after suffering shell shock, and a sensitively depicted relationship between cynical Col. Brandt (James Mason) and his idealistic right-hand man, Capt. Kiesel (David Warner). As with most Peckinpah pictures, Cross of Iron unfurls as a bloody phantasmagoria. The dramatic scenes are tight and controlled, with Peckinpah drawing consistently interesting work from his gifted cast, and by contrast the action scenes are disjointed and surreal; during the shell-shock sequence in particular, Peckinpah employs impressionistic editing techniques to replicate Steiner’s fragmented state of mind. There’s also plenty of the director’s signature slow-motion violence, so be prepared for shots of viscera exploding in lingering detail.

As a result of this multifaceted storytelling, Cross of Iron is dense and uneven. At one extreme there’s an excruciating scene of Stransky goading two soldiers into confessing their homosexual proclivities, and at the other extreme there’s an over-the-top sequence of Steiner’s platoon taking a group of female Russian soliders captive; the level of sexual violence in the latter sequence is predictably gruesome.

Yet even with all of this transgressive material, the film’s strongest element is a running commentary on the nature of war. By dividing the military mind into a group of sharply individualized characters, the story illustrates how the battlefield both invites and nurtures insanity. Steiner is a strange sort of noble anarchist, bound by a deep sense of loyalty to his men but disdainful of everyone in the upper ranks and virtually oblivious to the politics driving the war. Stransky is a self-serving opportunist not only willing but sadistically eager to make others die for his greater glory. The conflict between these two men becomes more and more heated as the film advances, until finally they’re thrown together in a darkly ironic climax.

That the picture ends on an ambiguous note, instead of definitively resolving the story, says as much about Cross of Iron’s virtues as it does about the film’s failings. The film raises a hundred probing questions even as it piles on lurid war-movie thrills, then dumps all of this information onto the audience so viewers can sort through the muck and find whatever they find. Cross of Iron is a fascinating mess.

Cross of Iron: GROOVY

Monday, April 25, 2011

The Omen (1976) & Damien—Omen II (1978)

A massive box-office hit feeding the public’s post-Exorcist appetite for supernatural horror but opting for cartoonish violence over gut-wrenching realism, The Omen is fabulously entertaining nonsense. The film’s premise remains tantalizing even after years of underwhelming sequels and retreads, Jerry Goldsmith’s powerful score set the template for myriad lesser imitations, and some of the creatively staged deaths in the picture have entered the horror-cinema pantheon. So even though The Omen has undoubtedly lost much of its power to shock, the film’s shameless entertainment value survives. Like the previous year’s Jaws, the first Omen movie is a textbook example of pulp disguised as prestige thanks to glossy stars and impressive production values. (Among other parallels, Goldsmith acknowledged that the iconic score John Williams created for Jaws was an influence on his work for The Omen.) Yet while critical admiration for Jaws has only grown over the years, time has put The Omen in its proper place as a guilty pleasure.
Here’s the backstory. Producer Harvey Bernhard saw dollar signs when a clergyman acquaintance pondered what might happen if the antichrist emerged in modern times, so Bernhard commissioned a script by David Seltzer and hired promising director Richard Donner (the success of this picture earned Donner a choice gig helming 1978’s Superman: The Movie). The story that Bernhard and his collaborators contrived involves American diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), who adopts a mysterious infant after his own son is stillborn. The ambassador unwisely hides the truth from everyone, including his wife, Kathy (Lee Remick), but once young Damien (Harvey Stephens) reaches his seventh year, things get messy. People around the child die gruesomely, raising Thorn’s suspicions, and then a crazed priest tries to convince the ambassador his “son” is an inhuman beast sired by a jackal.
The beauty of the premise, in terms of generating spooky excitement, is the implication that Satan has both an endless supply of minions and nearly limitless power. Furthermore, the biggest challenge to embedding the antichrist in society is the possibility that someone might take Damien out before he’s old enough to defend himself. That last bit creates a potent moral dilemma for Peck’s character.
Even though the plot crumbles under scrutiny, the movie’s operatic death scenes are enjoyably preposterous (“It’s all for you, Damien!”), and the made-up mythology (e.g., “the seven daggers of Meddigo”) casts an engrossing spell. Peck anchors the picture with anguished determination, while Leo McKern is memorably intense as the dude who says Damien’s gotta die, David Warner adds an enjoyable presence as a conspiracy-minded photographer, and Billie Whitelaw is all kinds of creepy as Damien’s nanny. With respect to Donner, who manages pace and tone expertly, and DP Gilbert Taylor, who provides a master class in the use of filters, the movie’s VIP is Goldsmith. His Oscar-winning score uses eerie chants such as “Ave Satani!” (Latin for “Hail Satan!”) to infuse the picture with palpable menace. His music is the film’s dark heart.
One could argue that the picture’s first sequel, Damien—Omen II, actually makes more narrative sense than its predecessor, inasmuch as teenaged Damien’s circumstances seem better suited to future global conquest; Damien (played in the follow-up by Jonathan Scott-Taylor) accepts his destiny while being raised by his uncle (William Holden), a corporate giant whose empire the antichrist stands to inherit. Alas, Damien is less exciting than the previous picture. It’s not as if Bernhard and co. suddenly decided to take the franchise seriously, but director Don Taylor lacks Donner’s crowd-pleasing flair and Holden, though always watchable, is very much in paycheck mode, whereas Peck committed to the silliness of The Omen. Having said that, the perfectly cast Scott-Taylor is quite disturbing as he grows more and more comfortable in his unholy skin, and the death scene involving an icy lake is genuinely frightening; the scene might even surpass the gruesome kills that made the first Omen notorious. One great scene, alas, does not make a great picture. Neither does behind-the-scenes turmoil. British director Mike Hodges was discharged partway through production and replaced with American journeyman Taylor.
The original Omen series concluded with The Final Conflict (1981), a grisly installment featuring Sam Neill as grown-up Damien trying to prevent the Second Coming, although a quasi-related telefilm called Omen IV: The Awakening followed ten years later. The original film was pointlessly remade in 2006, and a dreary prequel, The First Omen, appeared in 2024.

The Omen: GROOVY
Damien—Omen II: FUNKY