The Omen
Plot: Moments after his son is born in Rome, ambassador Robert Thorn is approached by a priest and told that the baby is dead, but that a replacement can be offered. Thorn accepts the offer, agreeing not to tell his wife. Soon after Thorn is appointed as US ambassador to England. A series of strange deaths begin to surround the child Damien as it grows up. A priest comes to Thorn, telling him the child is the anti-Christ, a son of the Devil. Thorn has him thrown out but shortly after the priest is bizarrely killed. Soon events force Thorn to confront what the priest says as truth and he and a journalist set out on an international quest to find a means of killing Damien.
The Omen was a ground-breaking film and one of the big box-office hits of the 1970s. It came with a wonderfully catchy promotion campaign - of a poster featuring the silhouette of the child in black which melded into an inverted crucifix against a scarlet red background and the tagline "Good morning.
Film poster for The Exorcist - Copyright 1973, © ...
Thorn
The OmenYou are one day closer to the end of the world." All of which served to make the film a big hit. Like Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) before it, it tapped into a 1970s fascination with the occult, evil children and a pre-millennial harbinging about the end of the world. It was made around the time that quasi-apocalyptic disaster movies such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) were hitting big and tapped into an undeniable fascination fed by Vietnam and Watergate that the world was falling in and nearing the end. At the same time Christian authors Hal Lindsey broached the best-seller lists with his work of Biblical non-fiction The Late, Great Planet...