Barnes & Noble

Longtime television director Richard Donner made a significant leap into feature-film direction in 1976 with The Omen, a harrowing chiller that ranks with the other occult masterpieces of the day: William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) from Roman Polanski. On the sixth hour of the sixth day of the sixth month, American diplomat Robert Thorne (strong-jawed Gregory Peck) adopts a newborn baby in place of the stillborn child delivered by his wife, Kathy (Lee Remick). The baby's name: Damien. All is well with the Thorne clan until at Damien's fifth birthday party, when his nanny commits suicide in a gruesome fashion in front of the guests. Inexplicable deaths follow, accompanied by a strange new nanny (Billie Whitelaw). With the help of a curious photographer (David Warner), Thorne then traverses two continents hoping to disprove the biblical revelations that point toward his precious bundle of joy being the Antichrist. With gothic religious undertones, The Omen delivers the scares in full, from subtle creeps to over-the-top shocks, and sets up two inadvertent sequels documenting Damien's devilish life -- Damien: Omen II and The Omen: The Final Conflict. A misguided fourth installment, Omen IV: The Awakening, followed on TV, but the original trilogy remains sharp. The DVD's superior sound does justice to Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-winning score -- which also included the Oscar winner for Best Song, "Ave Satini." Jason Bergenfeld

Barnes & Noble

A well-turned-out remake of the 1976 chiller directed by Richard Donner, this Omen could not hope to match the original's freshness and edge-of-the-seat intensity. Even so, this version avoids feeling like a cynical retread of classic material, thanks mainly to the accomplished performances of its principal players, every one of whom appears here at the top of his or her game. The story revolves around American diplomat Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) and his wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles), who adopt a baby under strange circumstances and are pursued relentlessly by the crazed Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), a Roman Catholic priest convinced that their child is the Antichrist. Years later, when the young Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) acquires a full-time nanny named Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), sinister and tragic things begin happening at a feverish pace, and Robert begins to think that perhaps Father Brennan's ravings had a nugget of truth to them. Together with journalist Keith Jennings (David Thewlis), he attempts to ferret out the truth about Damien's lineage. Director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines) re-creates the original Omen's most memorable scenes with commendable fidelity, and viewers who haven't seen the earlier film will find this one perfectly acceptable as something calculated to raise the hackles. Schreiber, a fine actor, brings the requisite credibility and gravitas to his role -- which was played in the 1976 version by Gregory Peck -- and the youthful-looking Stiles is surprisingly effective in a mature characterization designed for someone at least a half-dozen years older. Farrow invests the nanny with a surfeit of sinister charm and Postlethwaite does right by the passionate prelate whose grisly demise is one of the movie's highlights (as it was in Donner's original). It's no classic, but this Omen deserves a close look and may well offer rewards for those who give it a second or third look as well. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Satan's son has arrived on Earth and He's not about to let human parents get in the way. When his wife Katherine's (Lee Remick) pregnancy ends in a stillbirth in a Rome hospital, U.S. diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) substitutes another baby, whose mother died. Little Damien (Harvey Stephens) thrives, but, at his fifth birthday party, his nanny mysteriously dies; Father Brennan (Patrick G. Troughton) also expires after warning Thorn that he has adopted Lucifer's son. While sinister new nanny Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) assiduously protects Damien, Thorn's fears escalate when photographer Jennings (David Warner) shows him pictures from Damien's party with marks suggesting how the nanny and Brennan would die. Thorn seeks out Bugenhagen (Leo McKern), an exorcist who confirms Damien's identity and tells Thorn that the only solution is to kill his adopted son. As the bodies pile up, Thorn tries to do his duty, but trust the law to get in the way of saving the world from future Armageddon. Lucia Bozzola

Product Details

• UPC: 024543444800
• Source: 20TH CENTURY FOX
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: Letterbox
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français, Español
• Subtitles: English, Español
• Time: 1:51:00

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• 28 Days Later / the Omen
• The Omen Collection
• Omen (1976) & Omen (2006) (2pc) / (Chk Sen)
• Omen Collection (4 Discs)

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