Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)

Now I admit that I can forgive most instances of false advertisement. Just look at how forgiving I was about the blatant misuse of Christopher Walken's name back in my Eternal review. However, this time I've been really ripped off. Well, it is my fault for not reading the back of the box this time, but the box image alone promised so much. You see a sinister Sam Neill standing in front of the "President of the United States" emblem. Half of the emblem (the half that's to Sam's left, incidently) appears to be on fire. Seeing this cover, I thought what I'm sure I was intended to think: "The Antichrist has become the President of the United States! Oh yeah! This has GOT to be interesting." Add in the fact that this year a force of pure evil (well, more like pure stupidity, but you get the idea) has been put in the White House, mainly through power handed down to him from a daddy, and it was an instant rent.

Well, that annoying old saying is indeed true. Never judge a book by its cover. Or a crappy horror movie, for that matter.

To begin with, its not the Presidency our Damien is inspiring to. Oh no. For some odd reason, in order to fulfill some obscure prophecy that talks about the "Isle of Angels", Damien has to become ambassador to England! Dear God, what unspeakable damage can he do with such an influential post? Maybe help reinstate America as a colony of the British Empire or put pressure on the BBC to stop allowing PBS to show reruns of "Are You Being Served?" Well, who can say? Also, I hate to nitpick (well, no, actually I love to) but shouldn't everyone be saying ambassador to Britain, not England, unless this is a parallel universe where the entire Welsh and Scotish populations relocated to Martian colonies, or something. Since there's no indication that this is the case, I'll have to assume that the screenwriter is blatantly ignoring something that's common knowledge just to enforce a stupid plot point. But one would have to be pretty cynical to believe that. Well, cynical enough to also say that said screenwriter doesn't know that England's name is derived from the name of the tribe of 'Angles,' as in 'Anglo-Saxons,' but I doubt any of us are that embittered.

We also have the fact that Damien just ain't a very good Antichrist. Because this is a movie barely out of the 70s, Damien runs a company which, as he claims with a slight sneer, "runs everything from munitions to food to medical supplies." Of course, the screenwriter seems to think this is just enough to establish poor Damy as Evil-no signs of third-world exploitation or war-mongering necessary. Also Damien's entire purpose on Earth to begin with is a bit shaky. He's supposed to find and kill the second coming of Christ while he's still an infant. If he fails, he gets destroyed and Christ gets to grow up and bring about the usual Christian vision of an age of peace. If he wins, the Devil gets the planet, and there's an age of passion and despair. I'm not a terribly religious person, but this doesn't sound like the version of the Apocalypse most people are familiar with (for one thing, there doesn't really seem to be room for any real Apocalypse at all). If you can get past that, though, then you have to wonder why it seems like God-yes, God, Creator of the Universe, Omnipotent and Omniscient One-seems to be getting the short end of the cosmic stick. The Antichrist gets to grow up and build up his power, and then the Messiah is born as a helpless little infant? That's one hell of a handicap you got there, Jesus. And its not that the Son of God and Savior of Mankind gets a lot of help, either. Seven Friars, led by your typical old school movie priest Father de Carlo, are armed with seven holy daggers which are apparently the only things that can kill Damien. Unfortunately, these are seven incredibly incompetent friars who line up like sheep to the slaughter. In one scene, two Friars get Damien cornered on a bridge. As Damien does the whole "I'm staring at you and now you will die" thing that's a trademark of the Omen series and the Friar is forced off the bridge, his companion just stands there. Of course, Damien manages to dispatch the second Friar just as easily.

One thing that's interesting but not played over very well is the placement of Damien in a somewhat sympathetic light. He actually falls in love (with a journalist, if that says anything), gives flowers to the pregnant wife of one of his lackeys, and plays with said journalist's son Peter. Even his conversations with Daddy don't make him out too badly (although the occaisonal mentioning of things like "Age of Despair" don't help). Perhaps that's what makes the part of the movie where Damien decides to go King Herod all the more jarring, perhaps not. And yes, the movie does go into quite a bit of detail on the slaughter of male infants across Britain by Damien's followers, or in the case of a couple of scenes not enough detail. For example, the most chilling moments in the entire movie is when a mother becomes possessed and you see her gripping a hot iron intently as you hear her baby in the background. Later the father comes home, you hear no baby, you see him walk in a room, and all you see is the look of shock and disgust. To sum it up, it may not be a good idea to see this movie if you're a recent parent.

Who carries out this wholesale slaughter? There's a scene showing Damien talking to his followers (who honestly don't look like they'd have the numbers to crowd a fairly large high school auditorium, much less slaughter hundreds of infants across Britain) and we see that quite a lot of them are adolescents, teenagers, even kids. Also Damien mentions frequently how much he enjoys working with youth, even going as far as bullying the President to making him the head of the U.N council on youth affairs, or something. Also you have the journalist's son Peter cozying up to Damien and eventually working for him. So does this mean today's youth are the forefront of the Secular Humanist Conspiracy? Is this a scathing critique of the 60s-70s youth movement? Or is the movie just too stupid to even contemplate this kind of thing? Despite the occasional interesting message and the genuine creepiness of the infanticide scenes, the movie just isn't that interesting as either a horror movie or a political statement. Sam Neill deserves to have his Dramatic Pause License revoked after his acting here while the rest of the movie just relies on too many conventions-the holy but hard-boiled priest who can't get these newfangled modern people to believe in Evil, the said modern person who despite thier atheism eventually realizes the truth and becomes the only thing standing against said Evil, etc.-to take too seriously....

And don't even ask about how it ends. I'm still trying to figure it out...