Inspired by the successful (and extremely expensive) marketing campaign for Jaws (1975) the year before, the producers of The Omen (1976) made a similar size investment and it paid off big, with the film becoming one of the standout hits of the year. Starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as the ill-fated parents of Satan's spawn, The Omen is consistently ranked amongst the best Horror films ever made. It is interesting that Richard Donner was assigned as the director of this film about an evil child sent to destroy the world... because two years later, Donner directed a film about a child with the opposite role, as a savior: Superman (1978).
The newborn child of Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), dies shortly after being born. Concerned about how his wife will take the news, Thorn accepts a priest's proposal that he adopt a child who's mother has just died giving birth, and his wife need not know the difference...
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| The Omen. 1976 |
The couple raises the child, Damien, and Thorn is appointed ambassador to Great Britain...
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| The Omen. 1976 |
But things take a strange turn, when Damien's nanny commits public suicide while proclaiming her devotion to the child...
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| The Omen. 1976 |
and the arrival of a priest, determined to convince Thorn that he and his wife are raising the spawn of Satan...
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| The Omen. 1976 |
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| The Omen. 1976 |
and that their lives are in grave danger...
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| The Omen. 1976 |
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| The Omen. 1976 |
