With The First Omen opening in cinemas this week, the official prequel to the 1976 box office hit The Omen, presumably everyone is excited. But as our lively debate between Antichrist Martin Jameson and new messiah Nick Joy proves, not everyone will want to be standing first in line….

There will be spoilers! (for a nearly 50 year old film)

Nick: OK, I love the Omen trilogy. I discount the fourth one (The Awakening, a TV movie) and the unnecessary remake. By the time I first saw The Omen, on its UK TV premiere (1/9/81), I was aware of the series by reputation, the cinema release of The Final Conflict having been heavily advertised in March 1981. I knew it would have spectacular deaths, but even 12-year-old me was agog at David Warner’s decapitation. In time, I saw the sequels, and I subsequently bought the original on home entertainment releases of increasing definition. In the back of my mind, I wondered how much my love of the movie was coloured by nostalgia, but then I had opportunity to watch The Omen on a scratchy 35mm print at a local cinema last year, thanks to celluloid supremos Dirt in the Gate. And I fell in love with it all over again. I assume we’re on the same page here, Martin?

Martin: Only if that page is a written challenge to a duel! In which case – unlike Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg bottling their promised bout – it’s time to choose our weapons.

For me, my first bejewelled duelling pistol has to be the premise for the whole thing. To be fair, unlike The Wicker Man (which we duelled about last year), a film that is ridiculous from start to finish, The Omen has some decent sequences, some very good actors who are mostly taking it seriously, and it is even a little bit creepy in places… but… but: ‘Your baby’s dead, Signore, do you want to take this one? Oh, and don’t tell the wife. It looks the same, she’ll never notice.’ Seriously? I’ve seen it three times and that opening premise cracks me up every time. Poor old Gregory Peck, so determined to make Thorn a good and thoughtful man, he has to completely ignore his first, character defining scene. I’ve been working with actors for forty-five years and that must have hurt. And even when Patrick Troughton (with his strange Irish/Scottish hybrid accent) and David Warner (looking like the Pink Floyd hopeful that didn’t get past the audition) learn of his blunder no one gives him a hard time for his baby swapping antics (except the devil of course). So, Nick, what do I need to do to get past that?

Nick: Challenge accepted. My weapons of choice are of course the seven sacred daggers of Megiddo. And here comes the first blow. Gregory Peck embarrassed? Have you seen his awful German war criminal in 1978’s The Boys from Brazil, his accent alone being a war crime? At least he gets to play an upstanding American here, one who is clearly such a workaholic and incapable of empathising with his wife that any kid will do. It’s not like he’ll have anything to do with it – there’s nannies for that sort of thing. And being in such a successful movie can’t have damaged his career, not Lee Remick’s. If we can’t agree on the acting, can we both agree that the premise of Armageddon absolutely hit the zeitgeist? The paraphrasing of the Book of Revelations was genius.

Martin: How dare you, sir!!  This is Atticus Finch you’re talking about! I once had recording held up for half an hour on a BBC radio drama because a well-known British actor (who shall remain nameless) refused to accept that his character would talk about the lobster he’d just eaten prior to having sex. And that’s one of the more rational ‘my-character-wouldn’t-do-this’ moments I’ve had to negotiate in four decades wrangling the thespian community. God knows what he’d have said if I’d tried to persuade him he’d traded his baby in for the first spare bawler offered to him. Having said that, isn’t Any Kid Will Do a song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s unfinished musical, Damien and his Amazing Technicolour Safari Suit? As for the Book of Revelations, Nigel Farage may be a bit much for some people (including me), but even he didn’t suggest that the formation of the Common Market was a precursor to the end off the world. Although on the flip side, the 666 indicated by the opening scene, taking place at 6am on the 6th June assumes that Satan is working on Central European Summer Time rather than GMT which is two hours behind or even BST at just an hour, so perhaps there’s something in it after all.

The section that works best for me is the return to Italy with David Warner. Jerry Goldsmith dials down the music and it’s almost like a different film – closer to Don’t Look Now in tone… until David Warner’s hysterically funny decapitation. I’m sorry Nick, I just can’t take it seriously. It reminds me of that board game, Mousetrap, that we used to play when we were kids. I think it’s the bit where the driver knocks the handbrake… I can’t help exclaiming ‘Doh!’ every time – although arguably it’s a sequence that goes on to be the template for all five movies in the Final Destination franchise. Similarly, Lee Remick’s fall from the landing. I know Health and Safety hadn’t been invented in 1976 but who puts a goldfish bowl on a stair banister? And as for spooky kids and their tricycles… thank goodness children are just glued to their phones these days.

I genuinely enjoy the movie for its understated moments – the child who barely speaks, David Warner in his darkroom with a fag in his mouth, finding the scarred priest in the monastery, surprisingly underplayed… but for every one of those, there’s a thick wodge of melodramatic ham to get past, mostly involving Billie Whitelaw chewing the scenery. Perhaps my issue is that it’s trying to do both at once. I like hammy horror, and I like serious horror – I struggle when the two are confused.

Nick: All fair points, I was only seven when the movie was released. Was it a big deal at the time, and is your reaction a kickback against the overhyping of the product? By the time I saw it, it was a well-established franchise. And do you need good acting in a horror movie? Aren’t the viewers there for the thrills and chills? The Omen is like a superior ghost train, with well-timed and inventive kills. It was never meant to be Larry Olivier at the National. If it’s that bad, how has the movie created such a legacy? As well as the sequels, there’s the rip-offs, the pilot that didn’t go to series and the short-lived Damien series. And look how the name Damien is now associated with demonic children – South Park and Only Fools and Horses or the devil kids in films like Little Evil and Little Nicky. And 666, the number of the beast, got quite the boost in 1976.

Martin: I never buy the ‘isn’t horror supposed to have rubbish acting’ argument. Don’t Look Now, The Innocents (1961), The Innocents (2021), The Orphanage, His House, Relic, The Babadook, Barbarian, and of course, The Exorcist… just a few genuinely scary horror films where the acting is hard to fault. My issue with The Omen is that Peck and Warner (and perhaps Troughton) are aiming for something beyond the ghost train, which for me, exposes the film’s absurdities rather than embracing them.

But yes, you are undoubtedly right. The Omen, has left its Satanic hoof mark on our culture. I enjoy the movie despite its obvious flaws as opposed to finding them plain annoying as with The Wicker Man – about which you will never convince me!  If nothing else I have been persuaded to take a look at the next two in the original trilogy… and I might even jog along to my local cinema to see this new Omen offering.

I think we can both retire from the field, uninjured, both our dignities intact…

…although Lee Remick and that toy dog on wheels? Seriously???

Nick: I agree that we may both walk away from this with respective opinions acknowledged. Going forwards, I still suggest that you steer clear from any church services at Guildford Cathedral, and can you help with this strange birth mark I have on my scalp? It looks a bit like the letters SFB…

www.ninjamarmoset.com

The First Omen is in cinemas now