WHAT WENT WRONG - The Omen

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Was The Omen the most cursed movie ever made? Or was it just… the 70’s? Join Lizzie & Chris as they explore the series of tragic, strange, and mysterious events that plagued Gregory Peck and the crew of 1976’s horror classic The Omen. Could it be true that the devil didn’t want this movie to be made?!Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This whole nearly two-hour movie, all for me? It's all for you. I don't want it. I don't want it. Jump! Jump! I like this movie. It's, you know what?

It's fine. Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of what went wrong. This is our special spooky Halloween surprise drop for y'all. And for it, Lizzie made me watch. The Elman. I did. And I'm excited to talk about it, even though it was not the scary, terrifying movie I remember

from when I was like seven or eight years old. No. Although there are parts of it that I think are still pretty effective. I love this movie. Gregory Peck's ages. I can tell you that much. What are you doing in this movie, Gregory Beck? We're going to talk about it.

Sir, are you this child's grandchild? father. Sorry. Everyone to Lee Remick, ma'am, are you okay? Yeah, I know. It's rough. So we are talking about the original,

The Omen, not to be confused by its many horrible sequels. Or the remake from 2006. Which I did not think was horrible. I saw it in Daters. I thought it was fine. Pretty fine.

David Thuleas, I believe, is in that one. Yes, who looks exactly like David Warner. Exactly like the photographer in the first one. Yeah. All I thought was like, Hold on. Is it still David Teeler? Nope. Nope. It is David Warner, who you may recognize from another movie. We'll see when you get there.

Well, let's jump into it. Let's do it. The Omen was released on the 6th of June, 1976. Yes, that is a 6-6-6, the number of the beast. One of my favorites, the stupidity of the sixes continue. Listen, blame the Bible for that one. Revelations never should have been in the Bible. Revelations is technically in the Bible, although not a lot of Eastern Orthodox churches

included as canon. It is... Because it's the most fun book? Because it's the silliest book. And it was written not by John, the guy claimed to be John, but everybody's pretty sure this guy was not super smart. And he was just writing a book in Turkey. And some of the churches decided to take it.

And so then we get the omen. Good for him. spawned a whole film franchise, many film franchises. So directed by Richard Donner, written by David Seltzer, starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warrner, Billy Whitelaw, and Harvey Stevens as Satan spawn himself. Samian. Who honestly, I was watching with my wife. No, I was watching with my wife, and I was like, this behavior was very mild.

Like, we have a two-year-old. He does look like the devil. No, he does look like the devil. But, for example, he screams when he goes to church. Okay. Who doesn't? Am I right? Yeah.

He's riding his tricycle around. Not a big deal. He just, it's... Well, he does, like, watch as his mother falls to her semi-depth. Although, I will say, like, Nora has watched me get hurt, and she seems fine with it. So... Well, that's actually, I think that's part of the success of this movie. Is that it taps into something that everyone can relate to.

Yes, which we will get to a little bit. I think there could have been a different and maybe even better version of this movie that we do not get to see. So the synopsis, according to IMDB, is mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist, the devil's own son? The Antichrist. Okay. So the headline for this episode, Chris, I think, is The Omen. Was it cursed by Satan?

Or was it just the 70s? Yeah. The answer. Next. So this is a notoriously cursed movie. It has been pitched to us recommended several times. It is one of my favorites hokey, as it may be. I don't, yeah, to be sure, I don't dislike it.

I guess I was thinking, oh, yeah, this is like right up there with The Exorcist, because I had only seen it once as a child. No, no, definitely not. No, no, no. That's a real movie. This is a real movie. This is a real movie. This is satanic panic propaganda.

All right. Please continue. Okay. So, you mentioned The Exorcist. That had just come out at the very end of 1973 and was a huge box office success, breaking in somewhere around $200 million just in its initial theatrical run. Listen to our episode on The Exorcist. For more info on that, the production of that is potentially even scarier than the film itself.

And, of course, Exorcist Believer was just released to terrible reviews. Yeah, real bad. Instead of saying it. It did make money, I think. It did make money. Made some money. Listen to our episode on the first one. Yeah. Now, everybody is clamoring for the next satanic mega hit

because our rated religious horror is now officially a moneymaker. Remember, there was also Rosemary's Baby in 1968, also a mega hit. But worth mentioning, perhaps what Chris is picking up on here, is that both The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby were based on source material. Yeah. They're both based on books. The Omen, sure, is. not. So, unless you're talking about the book of revelation. No, he made up that poem. I know. That's what I'm saying.

Okay, so around the time the Exorcist was coming out in theaters, an advertising and PR executive named Robert Munger, I hope, I hope it's not Munger, had an idea. What if the devil were already walking among us and what if he were a little boy? Okay. Now Munger also happened to be a devout, born-again Christian, who got the idea after reading the most metal book of the Bible, The Book of Revelations! Definitely the one that the writer was on the most acid while writing, I would have to say. Yeah, he ate some. Maybe Genesis, actually. What's the stuff? Genesis is wild. Genesis is very wild. What's the stuff that they maybe

ergett? It could have been, you know, somebody's on ate some ergot. It was the ergot. It was the ergett. Blame it on the ergett. Yeah. Keep in mind, the Book of Revelations, and also the idea of the Antichrist, were not really like part of the common language in the same way that they are today, thanks to movies like The Omen. A good example of this is the numbers, 666 being the number of the beast.

In the movie, it feels a little silly that they have to explain to Gregory Peck what 666 means because we all know it. It's become part of the common vernacular. it's very popularized. That was not the case in the 70s. People probably did need that explained to them. Also, I believe scholars have established fairly certainly

that it's just a reference to Nero, the Caesar at the time, who was persecuting Christians. If you add up Caesar Nero in Hebrew letters, it gives you 6666. And that that was what John of Revelations. was referencing? What I'm learning is that Chris is no fun. Yeah.

So. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Not the devil. Well, continue. You never know. So Munger was absolutely approaching this idea from a very literal sense. He is a born-again Christian.

He absolutely believes that the devil is real. Not in the theoretical sense, but real. And he wants you to believe that the devil is real, too. So he takes this idea to his friend, TV, and sort of film producer, but mostly TV producer, Harvey Bernard. They talk about it over dinner, and by the end of the meal, Harvey is like sprinting home to start writing about Satan because he smells the money. I got the devil in me.

He got to get him out. He got the devil in him. Now, according to producer Harvey, Munker would often recite the book of revelations throughout pre-production, which must have been fun. Great. He also told them, this would be a dangerous mission. and the devil wouldn't like it. And then he queued the production system off camera to like rattle some pots or something like that.

Well, you know, we're laughing now, but you may not be laughing by the end of this episode. I promise you all still be laughing. Okay, I'll hold you to that when we get to the end. Now, like many people in this story, Harvey had done a lot of TV and was looking for his feature break. There aren't really a lot of big. names attached to this outside of Gregory Peck. So Harvey immediately calls his pal, screenwriter David Seltser, and pays him to write a script. There's no studio attached at this point, which again tells me Harvey smells some devil money, and he is fast-tracking this thing.

So while Munger and I think also Harvey wanted to make a very literal movie about the literal devil, David Seltzer had something else in mind. Quote, what I wanted to do with the was deal in the delusion of the devil and the fantasy and the imagination, because those things that really frighten us are those things that make us think we're losing our mind. Interesting take. Yes. So he wrote something that I think was more ambiguous in terms of whether or not Damien actually was the Antichrist. A little closer to like a take shelter. Is he insane? Is he not insane?

Yes. Or even like 10 Cloverfield Lane. Like is it actually happening? or is it not? And I don't even think it was clear at the end of what he had written. Oh, interesting. And what he was interested in was tapping into the fear that a parent can feel about the unknown in terms of their child. Very real. Yeah.

Kids are scary. So you know what else David wanted to do with The Omen? He wanted to get a free trip to London. That's why it said in London. And he crossed out exterior Los Angeles and said exterior, London. Literally. He was like, where do I want to go on vacation? London. Also, Italy and Jerusalem. And Jerusalem. Bang it out. Let's do it. Now, a producer named Mace Newfeld gets involved as an EP and manages to get the film on board at Warner Brothers.

But Warner Brothers had another devil movie on their roster, and that was The Exorcist 2, which they are also trying to fast track. So unbeknownst to the Omen team, they are trying to kind of keep the Omen. It seems, I'm reading between the lines here, but it seems that it's sort of like their backup devil movie. Right. Or they're trying to make sure they can control it. The property, is it going to step on the toes of the Exorcist's too, etc. That's a good point. Yeah.

And they keep lowering the budget more and more to the point where the Omen just falls apart. Got it. So the script is about to go into turnaround. when an agent read the script and liked it so much that he sent it to director Richard Donner. Now, he had made a career directing TV pilots at this point. So again, we talked about this on Galaxy Quest. You may look at these people's IMDB pages and not see a ton of credits for someone like David Seltzer or Richard Donner or they might have been like a lot of TV movies,

but he had done far more than you're even able to see on there. And he was very successful, but he was looking for his big. break as a feature director. And he would later go on to direct like the Goonies, Ladyhawks. Superman, Superman to. Right. Lethal weapon. Lethal weapon.

Yeah. Huge director. Yes. So Richard Donner was coincidentally having dinner with Alan Ladd Jr. What Went Wrong Alam and his wife that night. And Ladd was then the newly promoted president of 20th century Fox. This is like right before Star Wars. Right.

Donner was so engrossed that he read the whole school. script that he had been given by Harvey before dinner. And so he shows up and he's like, hey, I have this script in the car. It is really good. You have to read this. Also, the devil's real. Actually, we're going to get into this. But Richard Donner, I think, was much more on the same page as David Seltser. He was not so interested in this being as literally about the devil. Got it. Everyone else was. So, Alan Ladd Jr. agrees. that it's great and basically puts production on the Omen into hyperspeed at 20th century Fox.

Now, keep in mind, the script had been turned down previously by almost every studio at this point, including Fox. Somebody there had read it and said no. That was probably an awkward conversation when Alan Ladd came back and was like, we're doing the devil. Yeah. And also, apparently, Richard Donner was able to make some changes to the script as well. It included like covens of witches and gargoyles.

There was a lot going on. I would love to see that. Yeah, we love a gargoyle. He's the one who really hammered home. Like, whatever we do with this, it has to be believable. And that is what will make it scarier. Okay. So you might be wondering, how the hell did they get Gregory Peck to do this?

I'll be honest with you. I still don't totally know. You're getting them checks. Yeah, he was getting them checks. Now, Peck would have been around 59 years old when he signed on to do the Omen. He was connected via his agent. He signed on after reading the script. He really liked the script.

He was looking for a project. Do you think I could pass as 50? He said, sure. Yeah, I mean, he's still very handsome. It's extremely handsome. He's just, it's just, I guess I found it funny that it's like she can't have a child. Yeah, and he's a million years old. And it's like, I don't think your sperm move anymore.

She did have a baby. Right, that's true. So also, it was interesting, based on some interviews he gave promoting the Omen, which, by the way, he went out there on the host role and totally promoted this thing, which I loved and seemed very supportive of it. And he's someone who didn't do a lot of press. So I think he was proud of this movie. He's very good in it. He's really good in it. And I think part of it is that it seems like he enjoyed elevated horror.

In multiple interviews, he mentioned that he, you know, like Edgar Allan Poe, the bloodier Shakespeare plays. It seems like he did enjoy The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, and he wasn't put off at all by the comparisons the Omen would later receive to those films. He's like, they're all great movies. So several other actors were allegedly offered the role of Thorne for Gregory Peck. but turned it down, including William Holden, and a very interesting one, Roy Scheider. Oh, Roy Scheider would have been really good. Yeah, I know. And he would have been a little bit more age-appropriate, I feel.

Oh, yeah, this is right around Jaws. Yeah, so 40, something like that. Totally. He's great. He's also great as a man losing his mind. Yes. He's great. He is great.

Although I love Gregory. Gregory Peck's great, too. Another name I saw come up a couple times, but it was a little harder to verify, but would have been very interesting, was Oliver Reed. Oh, interesting. He would have killed that kid right away. Like, I don't know if I would have believed it. You would have a kid would have screamed. He would have said, take this shot.

Take another one. Kids out. Rest in peace, Oliver Reed, looking for our episode on Gladiator for more on him. I do wonder if William Holden maybe regretted it because he would go on to star in the sequel, Damien. The Omen, too. I've never seen it. Interesting. Yeah.

Everything after this one is really bad. It seems like those actors were turned off by the horror elements to it and very skeptical of how the violence was going to be handled. Because, to be honest, this movie is substantially more violent than I think both The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. Like, there's more sort of shocking gore in this. In a different way. Yes. I would say the exorcist is more violent in the sense that you're watching something occur to a child. Right.

However, this has a priest get impaled. It has a photographer get his head. Sliced off by a woman just gets repeatedly thrown off of increasingly high buildings. So she finally dies. That's true. That's true. Poorly remic. I like they're like, don't change the strategy.

just get her up a few floors. That's the only reason we messed up. You didn't kick her hard, no. Yeah. Yeah, oh, poorly. It is a very violent movie. It is. And it has a much higher body count than...

Oh, yeah. So Gregory Peck was nervous about the gore as well, but he seemed confident that Richard Donner would handle it tastefully and not be exploitive with it, which I think they did. I think it's very well done. I think there's one exception. The multiple cuts of the head getting sliced off. Or like, Richard Donner was like, how many angles can we get this?

No, he literally talked about that. He was like, what they did was they figured people watching in the theater. So the scene Chris is referring to, which we will actually... They would close their eyes when it first comes. Yes. And so then he just repeats the shot over and over again. Yeah, literally. That's what they did.

We're going to talk about this in a little bit later because this scene is very important. But Chris is referring to the decapitation of the photographer. So in auditions for... Damien. Richard Donner's technique was to tell the children when I call action, I want you to attack me. Don't stop until I say cut. So I imagine some of these kids are like, you know, like, I'm not really going for it. Well, not Harvey. He walked in and when Richard Donner said action, he took a running start and just hit him right in the balls over and over and over. Classic move. Classic little kid move. And then Donner says cut and he doesn't.

Stop. They had to pull the kid off of him. And Richard Donner was like, boom, Bing, bang, boom, done. Diasair Black, call him Damien. And he's great. By the way, the meltdown he has in the car is so accurate to how a little kid melts down. He's really good. They seem possessed. It is wild. Yeah. And his smile is so good. His smile is so creepy. My main source for this was the DVD commentary, because there's not a ton on this movie, but the commentary is great. And Richard Donner talking about this kid was so funny. He's basically like, yeah, I don't know that I, like, want him to be my kid, but it really good in this movie. Yeah. So Lee Remick and David Warner and Billy Whitelaw joined shortly thereafter.

At this point, they had Gregory Peck signed on, so everybody was like, um, sure. Warner, by the way, is the evil henchman of Billy Zane in Titanic. That is the other place. You may recognize him. That's right. And he's been in a lot of stuff. I also remembered him. I think he's in Tron.

Yes, I think that's right. One as well. I think he's great in this. I love him. He is. He's great. He feels very grounded. Yeah.

You know, performance in an outrageous film. Yeah. I think they all do. I thought all the cast was great. I really like the second nanny a lot. She's excellent. So now we're going to get into the more upsetting fair. Be warned.

Be warned. This is where we begin to explore the potential curse of the omen. On June 28, 1975, just a few months before filming was set to begin, something really awful happened. Gregory Peck's beloved 31-year-old son, Jonathan, committed suicide via a gunshot wound to the head in Santa Barbara, where he was living at the time. Jesus. This is the craziest thing to me out of everything we're about to talk about, because Gregory Peck still does this movie, a movie about wanting to murder your son because he's the Antichrist.

So this is what he was dealing with when he shot this movie. And by all accounts, he was a doting, very devoted father. Like, this was a huge blow. Awful. But he is extremely professional and he continued forward.

It reminds me of the island of Dr. Murrow when Marlon Brando's daughter died right before they were going to start filming, he was actually on a different film. And he still shot the movie. I don't think he approached it with the same professionalism as Gregory Peck did. Listen to our episode on that if you're interested in learning more. But just there's so much tragedy in a lot of these folks' lives. And I mean, even Zach Snyder.

When he was doing Justice League, his daughter committed suicide. And I don't know how you could go to work. I mean, no judgment. That's a just... On a movie that's all about the horrors of parenting. And like, it's just so that it's really incredible. So as if that weren't enough, just before filming began, Peck's plane to London, direct from Los Angeles, was hit by...

lightning. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how super uncommon that is. I mean, it certainly happens. But here's where it gets weirder. Three days later, as David Zeltser took the same LAX to Heathrow flight, it too was hit by lightning. According to the National Weather Service, commercial transport passenger planes are hit by lightning an average of one or two times a year. Wow. Well, this is about to get weirder because executive producer Mace Newfeld's plane was also struck by lightning on the way to the set. Even weirder, Robert Munger had installed lightning rods on all three planes. The lightning doesn't stop there. Also, later while filming in Rome, producer Harvey Bernard was also almost struck by lightning.

It's too much lightning. Even for the 70s, it's too much. And then that tree was struck by lightning, and then the priest got killed by the lightning strike in the movie itself. That's the weather vein on top of the chapel that kills him. The spear that they leave on top of every chapel. Yeah. That's a pretty good shot, though. They did a good job. Oh, when he gets impaled it, it's very effective.

It looks great. Looks very good. So filming begins October 6, 1975. The budget was somewhere around, Donner says, 2.25 million. including Gregory Peck's salary and Jerry Goldsmith's fee for composing. This thing was done very low budget, so it is impressive what this looks like. Those two were probably their two biggest budget items, and they just cranked this thing out. That budget includes shooting on location in and around London, Rome, and Jerusalem.

That's not like a fudged desert somewhere else. They are in Jerusalem. I was going to say, I figured they just shot that in Italy. They only had about 70 days to shoot this film as well. So let's talk about the curse, because this is a Halloween episode after all. Let's do it. Day one of shooting, allegedly some members of the crew were involved in a head-on collision. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured.

This was a bit harder to verify, so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently Gregory Peck accidentally slammed the car door on the hand of the actor playing his taxi driver in Italy, nearly severing his finger. I think this is true because you can still see a splint on his finger through some of those shots and there's some continuity errors where it hops in and out of shots and it looks very fresh,

which makes me think this is true. Also, that taxi driver pretty pissed at Gregory Peck in that scene. He is pretty pissed at Gregory Peck in that scene. It's about an hour and four minutes into the movie. It's when Peck gets out of the taxi at the old hospital and the driver is just like basically saying it got burned down.

And also, fuck off. While in London, Richard Donner, when he was getting out of Harvey's car, was hit by another speeding car, slamming him between Harvey's car and his own car door. Whoa. He was miraculously fine. So, it was the 70s in London, where the majority of this filming happened. Chris, any guesses what else might have been going on at this time that could have caused? some disturbances to the shoot. 1970s, London.

Like fighting with the IRA? Bingo, the IRA bombings. The troubles, yeah. The troubles, yes. Richard Donner, who just cannot catch a break at this point, had his actual hotel bombed. Whoa. A subway was blown up.

Subway station was blown up as they were walking towards it. And a restaurant that Mace Neufeld was going to eat at had to cancel his reservation because it had been blown up an hour before he was supposed to sit down. Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize how prevalent that must have been. But, I mean, for that many things to have hit just this one production, I mean, it must have been happening everywhere. The Irish really didn't want this movie to get released.

Oh, no. You're going straight to hail. All right. It's about to get crazier. At one point, Donner says that they had chartered an airplane. Now, they were going to just shoot with it on the ground at a small airport. I think filming it taking off or landing. You may see some stories about this where they say that it's a plane that Gregory Peck had chartered

and it was supposed to take him somewhere. That's not what Donner says in the interviews for the movie. So I'm going to take his version of this. Basically, the plane comes back day of and says, hey, we actually just booked a last minute full charter today. If you let us take that charter and just push your shoot a little bit, we will give it to you for a big discount. And again, they're making this for like no money. So Donner was like, yeah, absolutely, that's fine.

As the plane was taking off with a full charter, it hit a flock of birds. The engines failed. It crashed into the runway and off onto a street just beyond the airport, crashing into a car. that was driving along that street in the car were the wife and two children of the pilot of the plane. How is that possible? I think it was a small-ish airport

and it was one of those things where there's like a barrier fence between the runway and... No, I'm saying like just the coincidence of his wife and children. Well, unfortunately, if you think about it, it's not that crazy. It's potential that they dropped him off.

It's just, I mean, it's awful, but it's also... It's crazy. Absurd. Yeah. It's terrible. Moving right along because there's more. I told you you might not be laughing by the end of this. I think I'll get my laugh back by the end.

Remember our question. Is it cursed? Or was this just how it was in the 70s? So far, I would say we're 50-50. I think we're in the 70s. With the IRA bombing, certainly. Yeah. Also, there are a lot of animal attacks affiliated with this movie.

The Hellhounds, Not very well behaved. I was wondering. The baboons scene also? Oh, hold on. We're going to get to that. Hold that thought. The hellhounds were originally supposed to be highly trained German shepherds

that they had been planning on bringing to England from the U.S. for the shoot. And they had been training these dogs. But somebody did not do their due diligence because it turns out the dogs would have to serve a six-month quarantine upon arriving in England. So that's not going to work. So the only dogs available. to them are the absolutely terrifying gigantic Rottweilers that you see in the final cut. It's that guy down the streets, 13 Rottweilers.

That's literally what happened. During the scene in the graveyard, David Warner, who plays the photographer, his stuntman was attacked by one of the Rottweilers as planned. However, what wasn't planned is that it kept going and managed to bite through the metal and leather armor that he had on resulting in 14 stitches. 14 stitches. There's another, okay, Chris, here's where I'm going to bring your laugh back. There was another problem shooting the scene in the graveyard with all of the Rottweilers,

which is that they wouldn't stop humping each other. I was wondering if that was where you're going. I would have loved if they wouldn't stop humping Gregory Peck. They wouldn't stop humping each other. They wouldn't stop humping anything else. Pretty much all of the barking you hear is added in post. Yeah, I'm sure. Because Richard Donner was like, I just had to cut around the sexy dogs.

Like, they were doing it everywhere. He just had to use any shot where you can't totally see it. But I think if you look closely, there's some still happening. Yeah. All right. So you mentioned the baboons. Yeah. At the Windsor Wild Safari Park, they were like, oh, okay, so you have a scene, you just want the baboons to attack the car.

and Richard Donner is like, yes, that's the idea. And they're like, no problem, no problem. We're just not going to feed him for a couple hours, and then we're going to cover the top of the car in bananas. Great. So that's plan number one. Also, Kate, could you put this banana vest on? No big deal.

Don't worry about it. So they try that. And sure enough, the baboons come running out. Oh, they're going for it. They just sit on the car and eat bananas. So Richard talks like, Goddammit, God. So the animal trainer is like, okay, listen, listen, I have an idea. The biggest baboon, basically, king baboon of the Windsor safari park.

Babs. King Babs. Monkey Enclosure Man has a big cut that I need to stitch up. So I need to knock him out and remove him from the enclosure to treat him anyway. I think if you put him in the backseat of the car with Lee Remick and Harding. And Harvey. No. Yes.

While he's unconscious and the other baboons see him driven away like that, they will go berserk. So they did that. Oh, my God. There is a baboon in the backseat of the car with them when they are driving a crew. Just hoping they dosed him the right amount. Well, so he's unconscious in the backseat being held by a handler with Lee Remick in the front and Harvey in the front as well. And I think I'm not, I couldn't quite figure this out from the way he was talking about it. I think Richard Donner may have been shooting from the back seat.

If not, he was shooting close to the car. Yeah, definitely close to the car. I remember some of those angles. Yeah, they roll cameras. Uh-huh. And suddenly, Lee starts screaming. And Richard Donner is like, no, Lee, it's too early. Like, you need to wait.

And she's going berserk. And he realizes it's because the fucking baboon woke up. and it has its hands wrapped in her hair and is pulling her head into the backseat of the car. Oh, my God. This is so much scarier than anything in the movie. Baboons are horrifying. Oh, they're terrible.

They can literally rip you in from them. They just kill each other. Yeah. If you haven't seen Nope, watch that and understand why this is... Oh, that is a chimpanzee. Oh, that is a chimpanzee. But baboons, I think, can do similar horrible things.

Chimpanzees, we're going to get this wrong. I believe they are stronger than baboons, but baboons are very nasty. Okay, so meaner. That's also not good. So they managed to get its hands untangled from her hair, and they keep filming. And they film as much as they can before the handler is like, I can't hold him back anymore. And Donner has to scream at Lee to drive away. She does and gets out of the enclosure so handlers can jump in and shoot this thing with a sedative.

So her and Harvey's reactions in the car are 100% real because they had a live baboon in the car with them, which was awake, Chris. It was awake and struggling with its handler as they are being attacked by other baboons on all sides. This, I couldn't believe this. The 70s, man. The 70s. So they actually had shot an additional scene with lions in the park as well that wasn't used. shot it prior to the baboon sequence. The day that they left the lion enclosure to go to the baboons,

the guard had left the door to his guardhouse open by accident. Two lions came in and mauled him to death. What? Yes. All right, maybe it is a curse. I'm starting to lean. You might start to lean a little farther because it's about to get really crazy. But before we get there, let's talk about some inventive and cool things

that they did in this movie. One is the scene of... They used live baboons. One, the baboon in the backseat of the car. The scene of Lee Remick falling is pretty cool. They actually were going to drop her from the balcony. And she was like, I'm not doing it. You just put me in a car with baboons.

Like, fuck you, I'm not doing this. They're like, what if we put a baboon above you? What if a baboon catches you as you hit the balcony? There'd be more baboons. But thankfully, they agreed. They were like, that's fine. When you see her hands slip, she only drops a few inches to a platform below her feet. The actual shot that you see, I'm sure, Chris, you could tell this from watching it, but as a kid, I couldn't.

What they did, when you see her falling to the ground, you notice that you can't see her feet. And that is because she's actually upright against a wall that has been made to run. replicate the floor, including every piece of broken glass of the fish bowl and some fake dead goldfish. And she is shot upright on a dolly moving towards that. It looks really good, I think. It looks really good. It looks almost like it's a slow motion effect or something as a result. And I think what sells it, I believe they must have put like acrylic down to look like the water. Water. Yeah. And I think they did a really good job. They did. And that was like on the fly, which is really impressive. Yeah. It looks. Yeah.

I believe there's a shot in Jeepers Creepers 1 when Justin Long falls out of the tunnel into like the Jeeper hole that he lands in. Okay. That I think they did the same effect is my only point in that movie. It would make sense. It's a relatively cheap way to get something that looks pretty good. Yeah. Another inventive sequence in the movie, which Chris mentioned earlier, is the decapitation. Yes.

Now, in the script, the sheet of glass was supposed to drop from a building. And for anyone who doesn't know, the premise of the omen is that these things keep happening to people and what they realize, what David Warner's character realizes, is that he can actually see a premonition or omen of what is going to happen to each person in the film that he takes with his camera. He sees the spear that ends up impaling the priest. He sees the noose around the nanny's neck, and eventually he sees something cutting his own head off.

So what happens is when they are in Jerusalem, he ends up getting decapitated. So John Richardson, special effects supervisor, who was in charge of this shot, just couldn't get the glass to fall right. It wasn't working to drop it vertically. So finally he came to Donner and he was like, I have an idea. What if we could get the glass to fly horizontally straight at his head? So they workshop it and they come up with the idea on site of, the glass sliding off of the truck bed. It is very effective.

It works really well. And to Chris's point, they intentionally counted in the edit. They initially had it cut so that it was like, you know, one, two, three, and it's done. But instead, they were like, no, I bet people are going to peak after three seconds. And I want them to see it. So they keep showing it over again. Oh, sorry. Sight, sly, sly, sly, sly, slice, slice, slice, slice.

Let the bodies hit the floor. It's just like so over the top. And especially because, like, I really feel that some of the earlier kills showed a good amount of, like you said, artistic. Restraint and integrity. For example, the wide shot of the priest getting impaled. It's great. It's very effective. The wide shot of his first nanny hanging herself and blasting through the blast, et cetera.

And then we hit this one, and it says, let's get some close-ups of this guy's head going 300. 60 degrees in the air. Yeah. It's very funny. Absolutely. So the scene freaked David Warner out so much. He wouldn't watch it. He also really didn't like the dummy head,

although apparently Richard Donner would carry it around and even drove home with it in his car at one point. Weird. So Friday, August 13th, 1976. So this is just a couple months after the Omen had come out, but we're going to talk about it now. John Richardson, who I just mentioned, who was the special. Special Effects supervisor, and his girlfriend, Liz Moore, were working on a bridge too far in Belgium when they got into a really bad car accident. Just a side note, I have seen her listed as his assistant frequently, but in the behind the scenes interviews that I mentioned, she is very clearly referred to as his girlfriend.

So though Richardson walked away with minor injuries and was okay, Liz Moore was decapitated. Jesus. And this is the man who developed that sequence in the movie. She was decapitated by a flying tire. God. It's really awful. Even weirder, there are a lot of rumors online that say that the accident took place next to a road sign that stated 66.6 kilometers to the town of Omen, O-M-E-N. However, I did some sleuthing.

I don't think that this little satanic factoid is possible. I'm going to say that that is stupid internet stuff. Well, according to Harvey, John and his girlfriend, as I said, were in Belgium when this happened. Omen is a town in the Netherlands. Belgium does border the Netherlands. However, the closest border point that I could find was over 200 kilometers. But Harvey does say that when John came to from the crash, he looked up and saw a sign that said, 66.6 kilometers to Lijge, Belgium.

Still feels weird to me. I don't know why you put that mileage on a sign. Yeah, and I feel like it's an American movie, and that's kilometers. It just, it doesn't add up. I think, I think, we're back to 70s away from Curse on this one. Also, you didn't need it, just the fact that she was decapitated in a car accident. Robert Munger, why'd you throw the sign up there? Seriously.

Now, it sounds like it was a relatively smooth, post-production, although this is where the movie was pretty firmly cut into the Satan is real version that you see today. But it did have a different ending originally. And that ending was shot, and it was that Damien died with them. He succeeded. Is that, it, it seems like there was a little coffin at the end. Maybe there was a shot that snuck in because they did shoot it. So the The original funeral was three coffins, one for Gregory, one for Lee, and one for Harvey. Okay. I might be way off.

Carmela mentioned she was like, why was there? Wait, did Damien not die? I thought he did. I thought there was another coffin. I didn't notice it. It's the wife's coffin. I thought it was the wife's coffin. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I thought. But maybe it just shot got in. I don't know. I have to rewatch. Check it out. Alan Ladd Jr. is the one to thank for this. He watched an early cut and he loved it, but he suggested that the child shouldn't die,

that it would be a much better ending if he didn't. So they reshot the funeral to capture that last sequence of Damien's smiling at the camera, which is, that's such a great shot. Yeah, I think he was, I think it's a solid ending. Yeah, no, also like, you got a whole franchise. He obviously was like, you can't kill the franchise in the first movie. Other titles considered included the Antichrist and Birth Mark. But they went with the Omen, which I think is right.

A couple more little fun facts. would have been interesting. I don't think enough people knew what it was, probably. I think that's true. I think people really were not as familiar with this content. This whole thing was popularized by like a weird sect of evangelicalism that decided that they were going to popularize revelations in the 60s and 70s and 80s. I mean, that's Robert Munger.

I know, that's what I'm saying. And they did it as a way to make people feel that Satan was real and lives among us, which is not actually a popular conception amongst most Christians. No. And that's what led to, as a result, the belief that the apocalypse will happen in our lifetime and books like the Left Behind series. Also, our episode on The Conjuring is worth listening to.

There's a lot there. And also people who think that, you know, climate change is just a sign of, you know, the apocalypse. Sight. Yeah. A couple more little fun facts. And then we will wrap up this special spooky episode. So, Chris, you mentioned a poem earlier in this,

which is a very fun, very biblical-sounding poem when the Jews returned to Zion. And it mentions, you know, from the eternal sea, he rises. You might think it's in the Bible. No, no, no one thought that was in the Bible. No, I think a lot of people did think it was in the Bible. No one who's read the Bible thinks that's in the Bible. No, it's written better than it's catch-catcher.

One fish, two-fish, redfish, bluefish. A famous verse from the book of revelations. So anyone who thinks that that is in there, it is not. However, he did pull the idea of the Antichrist being born into politics. That what David Warner's character says in the movie is correct, that many scholars have interpreted passages in there about the Eternal Sea to refer to times of revolution, aka politics. Again, I believe that came from Nero's persecution of Christians.

Chris, I'm never doing Halloween with you again. All right. All right. Read your Bible. Or don't. All right. So when it came out, the Omen was a box office hit, bringing in over $60 million and its initial run on that $2.25 million budget.

Not the exorcist, but not too shabby. It did great. Oh, great. That's a killer. Critical reception was mixed at best with many comparing it unfavorably to Friedkin's horror classic as well as to Rosemary's baby, which was bound to happen. But like, whatever,

this is better than what we have in theaters right now. So I would happily go see this. Well, it's also, it's like a hundred times better than The Exorcist too. Yes. Which is, I mean,

everyone agrees. That's terrible. Yeah, this is a blast. It doesn't hit at the same level of those classics, but as far as devil movies go, it's in the upper tier. Oh, as far as devil movies go,

I feel like this is top five. Well, that'd be a good list. Listeners, send us your favorite, devil movies. Yeah. Devil's advocate also would be in there. Anyway, so a little bit of good luck. Devil wears Prada also. Okay. A bit of good luck. This did win an Oscar. And that was for Jerry Goldsmith, for Best Original Score. And it is his only Oscar ever. What? Yes. I love this score. It is really good. You don't like it? I, it's not that I, I liked the horror part. Yes. I didn't like the happy parts.

My favorite scene in this whole movie is when the Hellhound is stalking Gregory Peck through the house at the very end. That's a great scene. Well, it's just for listeners who haven't seen it, the dog is moving slowly through the house. And as it's moving, it's, you know, panting like a dog. And it's panting breath start to slowly transition into this choir that's singing. Yeah, like a Latin choral. Yes. I love it.

I think it's so good. It's so effective. I agree. I thought that was the scariest. That was the one scene in the film. It is scary. As a 34-year-old man, I thought, okay, this is pretty scary. It was so effective because he doesn't, that's the, she, the nanny, Mrs. Blilock, I believe, is the one person.

She's the one loose cannon. So he's actually in danger. And it's very, it's very effective. Really like that scene. It's really good. That whole sequence in the house at the end is great. It's a great sequence. It really is.

This movie was a big break for a lot of people. Harvey Bernard would go on to produce movies like The Lost Boys and The Goonies, Mace Neufeld, the entire Jack Ryan franchise, among many, many others. Richard Donner, as we mentioned, Superman and Superman 2, The Goonies, Lethal Weapon. This launched a lot of careers. So, was it cursed? It depends on who you ask.

Producer Harvey literally said, I really believe the devil didn't want the picture to be made. Robert Munger felt the same. However, Richard Donner does not believe it was the curse. He thinks it was all really unfortunate coincidence, aka it was the 70s. He also did say that when Fox PR got a hold of the stories about the crazy shit that had happened on set and things like the accident afterwards, they asked them if they thought the movie was cursed. And Donner, smelling a marketing campaign, said,

Oh, of course, yeah, definitely totally the curse of the omen. 100%. So it is possible the rest of them are still towing that line as well. And that wraps up the omen. Great episode, Lizzie. You were right. I was not laughing by the end. It gets really upsetting.

I did not see any of that coming. There's so much tragedy around this film. It's really like, listen, it is Halloween. So let's entertain a little bit of the movie. the paranormal here. It is strange. The amount of stuff that happened on this production, before this production, during this production, is a little spooky. That might be the highest instance of accidents on anything we've talked about. Absolutely spooky. I would agree. And true accidents, like things that were not the fault of people who were making the movie

except for the King Baboon incident. I would call that in. incident for sure. That was definitely, yeah, not next. Negligence. And that man went on to work on Roar. Seriously. Curses are not real, but it is very spooky. It's weird. And it is very weird. And, you know, you reminded me of that end sequence. I think the movie doesn't, it hasn't aged quite as well as Rosemary's baby or The Exorcist, but it's aged decently overall. But with the exception of that last sequence in the house, that last sequence in the house is a great. sequence that has aged extremely well and is worth watching the movie for that sequence alone. So I would definitely recommend folks check it out if you haven't seen it.

It's great. It's super fun. It's not crazy long. Gregory Peck is wonderful in it. The kids real creepy. Love Mrs. Blaylock. Also, she's a haughty in real life. They really made her look horrible in this. And she's like very beautiful, very hot. Kind of looked like Janet Lee. So impressive job on giving her some really bad baby bangs. The most satanic thing of all. They gave her some real gnarly bangs. The baby bangs. Oh yeah.

Nobody's going to bang you with these bangs, Mrs. Blilock. They're so bad. She's so beautiful. And I was like, what did you do? Oh, God. Well, she is supposed to be a limb of Satan. All right, Lizzie. We got to get to what went right.

That's, yes. What went right, Chris? Well, nothing. This movie should never have been made. Clearly, we have violated the covenant of man and God. by making this movie. I think Gregory Peck went right in the sense that, for me, to me, the only real reason the movie works is because he plays it completely straight.

And he's a storied, accomplished, respected, incredible actor. And we just talked about Galaxy Quest last week. And playing it straight takes a lot of guts and it can feel very risky, especially this is the equivalent of an indie film when you think about the budget in a lot of ways, you know, and the material. It's not like the conjuring now

where you're getting serious performers into a franchise. This was him stepping out on a ledge and really taking a leap of faith for the movie and good on him and to promote it as well. Yeah, that's a good. point. In a lot of ways, this was one of the first instances of an actor of his caliber stepping into a horror role like this. Because if you think about The Exorcist, Max von Sidox, I mean, Max von Sied out, yeah, but maybe more well-known outside of America. I mean, Gregory Peck was

the movie star. Like, yes, he was older. He was aging. But, like, he's an Academy Award winner. Like, he, you know, everyone knows who Gregory Peck is. Not unlike Russell Crow. the Pope's Exorcist. Which I can't wait to watch. It's very fun. I will just say, watching Russell Crow in that habit, riding on a Vespa in Rome with an Italian accent, it's actually a very fun movie. I highly recommend it. Great.

I think you will not regret the time you spend with Italian. All right. Sign me up. Amordadella. Sign me up for the Pope's Exorcist. In terms of what went right for me, I will highlight the music. I really like it. If you're going to watch anything, watch that sequence in the house.

I think you get a good flavor for what Jerry Goldsmith did with this. And, hey, he really deserved an Oscar. So I'm glad that he got it. Yep. And if you're planning on having kids, watch the scene where they try to take him to church. Because that is trying to get your kid to take a bath, trying to get them to go to the grocery store, trying to get them to go to bed. You're not trying to get them to leave the park.

Selling me. Yeah. But it's so nice when you fall and they just look at you. All right, guys. That's it for this week. We have to give a special shout out to our full stop supporters on Patreon. That's right. Chris Lille, Matthew Pelton, Tom Kristen,

Soman Chianani, and Michael McGrath. You guys are crazy and we love you for it. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. If you guys are interested in more bonus content, check out our Patreon. You can hear great interviews with, below the line crew members who have crewed on some of the movies that we are talking about,

as well as our intensely sophisticated, highly intellectual discussions of things such as, I don't know, Kevin Costor's divorce. I was going to say, that's all I want to talk about. On our rip from the headline segments. Was he anything else before we let these folks go? No. Well, yes. Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween. Go to Patreon. slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong can gain access to bonus episodes video content and more what went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by lizzie bassett and chris winterbauer editing music by david bowman with cover art from eauana yuos