In 1976, "The Omen" was a very popular movie and it spawned sequels as well as a recent remake. So, it's not surprising that someone decided to make a similar film just year later. "The Chosen" (also known as "Holocaust 2000") is a film about the pending end of the world, but instead of a little boy being the spawn of Satan, here he is all grown up and ready for Armageddon.
Robert Craine (Kirk Douglas) is a rich man who runs a company that builds nuclear powerplants. He is hoping to build one in the Middle East though somehow you know that the project is evil and will lead to the end of the world. And, the guy driving this ending is Craine's own son (Simon Ward)...or perhaps his unborn child. Through the course of the film, Robert slowly starts to realize this...and it's up to him to save humanity...or not.
One of the big differences between this one and "The Omen" is the quality of the production. "The Omen" was made by Twentieth Century-Fox and "The Chosen" was made by a smaller company and released by American International Pictures...a company well known for low budget and cheesy films. Oddly, however, "The Omen" is much more over the top and silly...one of the reasons it is actually more enjoyable than "The Chosen". However, despite this, Douglas' performance is really over the top later in the movie...much more than Gregory Peck's in "The Omen".
One of the worst parts of the story is that Craine supposedly meets some priest and the old man tells Craine all about the apocalypse. But EVERYTHING he tells Craine is pure crap...and has nothing to do with the book of Revelation. It's just made up and is laughably so. They didn't even try to make it seem possible.
So it is worth seeing? Well, it depends on whether you like this sort of thing AND if you mind the silliness which occasionally occurs in the movie...and it is pretty silly.
By the way, according to IMDB, there is an American version and an international version...both with different endings. I saw the American one, though the ending was still pretty open-ended.
