It’s
the holidays and we’re feeling it even here in the Sewer. This year
we’re taking stock of the many gifts we’ve gotten from the movies over
the years and celebrating them in the form of a Christmas carol. In our
own special way.
While the traditional 12 Days of Christmas
counts up from one, we think it’s more fun to count down between now
and the big day (and yeah, we built in some slack for ourselves). So
sit back and get ready for some great moments from some great CHUD
favorites, and some possible holiday gift ideas while we’re at it.
On the seventh day til Christmas my true CHUD sent to me…
Seven daggers of Megiddo
Oh my Father, Lord of Silence, Supreme God of Desolation, though mankind reviles yet aches to embrace, strengthen my purpose to save the world from a second ordeal of Jesus Christ and his grubby mundane creed. Show man instead the raptures of Thy kingdom. Infuse in him the grandeur of melancholy, the divinity of loneliness, the purity of evil, the paradise of pain.
– Damien Thorn, Omen III: The Final Conflict
In Omen III: The Final Conflict (originally just called The Final Conflict, but I sort of like the franchise numbering system), jackal spawned anti-Christ Damien is all grown up and has become Sam Neill. He’s the US ambassador to England and he has his eyes on the presidency, but first he must contend with the fact that an astronomical event that is described as ‘the second Star of Bethlehem’ heralds the arrival of the Second Coming. Add to that hassle the fact that a bunch of priests have uncovered the seven daggers of Megiddo, the only things that can kill him, and he’s got quite a few problems.
Sure, Omen III is the worst of the bunch (I’m not even counting Omen IV: The Awakening as so much as existing), but it’s still got plenty of fun bits. And we tend to love the underdog around here. Speaking of dogs, how can you hate a movie where Damien sics a pack of adorable little hunting dogs on a dude and they eat him to death?
The Omen films were sort of the precursor to the Final Destination movies in terms of kills, and The Final Conflict does continue some of that Rube Goldberg-esque mayhem. My favorite kill is the Budd Dwyer-reminscent suicide of the ambassador to the UK (who must be removed to get Damien into position), but the wackiest kill is the monk who tries to stab Damien on live TV but, while in a catwalk, gets tangled up in wires, swings upside down through the set (and I mean through – he crashes through the backdrops), somehow starts a fire, swings back across the set, pendulums back again, this time into the fire, catches on fire, and then burns to death while people run to get extinguishers. It’s amazing.
This film is also notable for being a close runner-up in our 10 Best Kid Kills list; Damien figures out which day the Christ child will be born, so he has his followers kill every baby born that day. One gets drowned during a baptism! Good stuff.
Sam Neill is pretty great as a grown-up Damien. His looks spookily foreshadow John Edwards, and he brings an understated quality to the role. He rarely plays Damien as eeeeevil (although the scene I quoted above, where he’s praying to Satan, ventures into that territory. But in a good way) but rather as a highly motivated mover and shaker. He’s like Bill Gates, but instead of installing shit operating systems on your computers, he wants to bring Hell to humanity. Well, maybe he’s exactly like Bill Gates after all. He also sells the scene where he brutally buttfucks his girlfriend without asking first.
The truth, though, is that even with all of these excellent elements, The Final Conflict is often a drag. It’s a real missed opportunity, especially at the end. Jesus shows up in the final reel, but he’s just like a glowing figure hanging overhead as Damien dies after being stabbed in the back by his girlfriend (hey, that’s kind of ironic). “Nazarene… you’ve won… nothing,” he hisses as he croaks, and then Jerry Goldsmith’s score gets all beatific and a dumb Bible verse shows up on screen. But the level of massive letdown here is almost huge enough to be awesome; you spend the whole movie waiting for the movie’s title to come true, for Damien to tussle with Christ 2.0, and the whole thing somehow comes down to the consequences of not using KY Jelly.
You can buy the complete Omen Collection from us by simply clicking here. Sadly it comes with the awful Omen IV, but you can just throw that away. Or use it to kill a baby for Satan.
If there’s a real special Omen fan in your life, you can buy them the alternate sequel to Final Conflict. Omen IV: Armageddon 2000 was published a year after the movie; I haven’t read the novel, but I understand it has Damien’s girlfriend giving rectal birth to his child. That’s fucking incredible, and why that wasn’t adapted into a movie is a mystery. I can’t think of a single anal birth scene in film history, and Omen IV could have been a trailblazer. This also makes a good stocking stuffer as you can buy this shit for ONE PENNY on Amazon by clicking here.