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What would you do if you got scammed? Would you suffer in silence or would you do something about it? Well, I got scammed once and this is the story of what I did. I'm Justin Sales, the host of The Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer. And for seven episodes, we're hunting a con man, a guy with a lot of aliases, a guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him. Listen to The Wedding Scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the Ringer's Philly special. Yeah. The saddest pod on the Ringer universe these days. Yes. No, it's fine. What are you talking about? The Eagles are the best team in the NFL. What's the deal with your quarterback's knee? What's the deal with your quarterback's knee? Don't worry about my team. Also, the watch. You pop on the big picture as well. You know what we say when we do the watch, Bill? What? It's all for you, Bill.
My name is Bill Simmons. We're about to do the 1976 important distinction version of a classic, The Omen. It's all for you, Damien. Next. For generations, the Thorns have been a family of tremendous wealth, position, and power. Robert and Kathy had a perfect marriage and a beautiful child. Then something terrible happened. And then it happened again.
And they knew it was an omen. Gregory Peck, B. Remick, the Omen. Rated R. All right, CR, this is the IMD synopsis of this movie. Mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist? Coming up next!
The devil's own son? Yeah. What a great premise. I love it. This is a really crazy time for horror movies in the 70s where it's not just like, oh, horror movies can, we don't get to Halloween until 1978 where it's like, this guy escaped from a mental institution. He's going to kill some babysitters. It's like, cool. End of movie. This is like The Omen, The Exorcist,
These movies are trying to do like big picture things about the future of mankind, religion, whether Satan exists. Can, can you fight off Satan? And, uh, just things that really weren't in the mix until Rosemary's baby, I guess was the first one, right? Rosemary's kind of introduces it. These, you know, I, I think that you, you mentioned to me before we were doing this podcast that you find that
movies like this are indicative of like greater societal depression or unrest. And I think it's telling that these movies and this one specifically, and given its subject matter, I don't think we can ignore it. It's like, it's coming out of Watergate, right? Like, and this sort of malaise that's probably over the country, uh,
And it's very telling that like their idea about where the Antichrist will come from is specifically from politics. The eternal sea is going to be politics. Yeah. I always find it really interesting to see like what horror movies come out during what times in like in society, you know? Right. And this becomes a franchise, which I'm not sure if they knew when they made this movie that it would, but it's so set up for a sequel at the end. They're not really thinking sequels in the mid 70s the same way we would now. Yeah.
But it ends in a way where you go, well, if this works, they'll have to bring this kid back and it'll be a little older. Sure. That's Omen 2. Omen 3 is with our guy, Sam Neill. He is our guy. Where that's the culmination of this where it's like, all right, now the Antichrist is now in a real political position. I always thought this movie was super distinct, really well acted, really well done, really unsettling.
And I don't know why it's a rewatchable for me. We were trying to pick a horror movie and we want to do something from the seventies. We did the exorcist a while ago. Um, we were talking about Amyville horror, but it's hard to do Amyville horror without doing the omen first because it kind of paves the way in some ways. Um, there's an evil kid thing to this too that I think it creates. I don't know if it existed before this, but for some reason, that's one of my favorite genres. As you know, I love the good son. Yes. I love the orphan. I like good night, mommy. I like bright burn. I
I like, we need to talk about Kevin. Is that a first time mention of Brightburn on the rewatch? Brightburn's good. Go watch Brightburn. I like when there's something wrong with the kid, but it takes everybody about an hour to realize it in the movie. Yeah, because you would never want to believe that about your child, right? No. Not even just that they're the Antichrist, which would be like a worst case scenario, but that there's anything wrong with them at all. You know, and it's one of the things I like so much about this movie. And I think the director, Richard Donner, who's basically in the top,
like 97th percentile, 98th percentile. If you were like, I want a guy to direct my genre movie, you know, and you're not going to get Spielberg. Like you would probably go with Richard Donner. And, you know, he absolutely grounds this in the anxieties of a couple. Yeah. And their fears about not being able to have children, what happens if they're a natural child, this terrible secret that Gregory Peck's character is keeping and everything about it feels very real.
until you get into the last 30 minutes of the movie. And then it goes off the rails. Then Buchan Hagen shows up. Yeah, when you're a parent, you have a kid, the kid pops out, and your first instinct is like...
Are all the arms and legs there? Yeah. Are both of the eyes there? You're just the most basic things ever. Is this, is this, you're just, you're just checking for jackals. You're just checking boxes. You're just checking boxes. Is this kid healthy? Is it okay? They, kid comes out, they put a bunch of like tubes and all these things. And it's just the most nerve wracking experience you're ever going to have. And then you realize the kid's fine. And then you go on this little journey with the kid over the next two, three years. And it's like,
Is my kid okay? Is, is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal? I don't remember having the conversation with my wife of like, is my kid potentially evil?
But I think it would take a while to come around. We certainly had some moments with Ben where like looking back, it was like, oh, there was some omen potential. You can totally tell that Ben never listens to the podcast. Right. It's like, ah, in retrospect, maybe we, maybe we could have taken Ben to a church just to maybe, uh, maybe have a priest bless him or something. But,
I would say the two biggest fears, one would be, you know, something's wrong with my child. There's some sort of development thing. And then the other one would be, oh, my kid's the antichrist. Well, that would be... That's number one for me. That's a 10 out of 10. It's like, oh, I'm actually raised in the spot of Satan. Well, a lot of people ask me, like, how come you and your wife haven't had kids? And, you know, sometimes I tell them, yeah, we really like to have our free time and, you know, whatever. And...
Do we have lots of reasons? And then it's also, it's just like, and then there's the antichrist piece. Right. I don't know if you've seen the good son. Um, it is one of my favorite themes though. The good son does a really good job of it too. And we'll do that on the rewatchables at some point of it's usually the mom has the better sense in these movies. It's always the mom knows first. They have these intuitive powers. They're kind of looking at the kid's side. I just like, Hmm, that's weird. The good son, um,
You know, the kid dies in the bathtub. Macaulay Culkin's little brother. And the mom's like, you don't want to think about that about your son. But it's like, man, that was weird. And then some things add up and then it culminates and she finds this stuffed animal. It's like, why did you have that stuffed animal? And Culkin flips out. It's a great gimmick. Brightburn did it, basically, the good side as an alien. Yeah. And it's really good where this kid just shows up, this couple can't have kids.
But I don't know what genre this is. I guess just evil kid. Yeah, but I think... Can we come up with a better name? It's Bad Seed, right? Bad Seed. Bad Seed. I like Bad Seed. I think that it just plays on an almost universal anxiety. The one that you just described. That it's just like...
how hard it is to have a child and then how hard it is to raise a child. And then... And all the worst case scenarios with that child. What if there is a force beyond your control impacting that? It's like, I think...
All great horror movies, and especially these in the 70s, because like you're saying, there are more extensions of dramas that were being made in the 70s rather than horror becomes its own genre and it becomes like horror for horror's sake. Because I don't really know if Friday the 13th and Nightmare are about societal anxieties other than like sexual repression or like whatever, you know? But like these are very much rooted in, I think...
It's interesting that Exorcist, Omen, and Rosemary's are all impacting upper middle class to upper class people who think that they have it made, who think that everything is, they got life all figured out. And Gregory Peck in the beginning of this movie is like, what a miracle. Somebody hands me this baby. I can take away all of my wife's pain that she's going to have. And then he's going to go off and live in these castles and be this sort of international...
power broker. And obviously it doesn't work out that way. That's a good point about the middle upper class thing with these movies.
Yeah. It's never somebody who's just like living in an apartment in the city. Or if they do in Rosemary's Baby, it's like, you know, Guy is like a up-and-coming actor. Right. But when they have their child and when they become friends with people in the building, that's when he really, the lead actor goes blind or whatever, you know? Yeah. That movie is super creepy. Yeah. And very influential. Yes. And the one that really took Polanski to another level and all that stuff. And then...
The Exorcist was the next one where we talked about that when we did that one, people throwing up in the theater and passing out and just that pushed the envelope in all these different ways. When did you first see this? I saw Omen 2 in the theater. Okay. And then I don't think I saw Omen 1 until it was on cable. Yeah, no, I just was, you know, I was in that horror movie run. Um,
Omen's on a lot. Yeah. And I think the, we'll go into it when we break it down. The first like 35 minutes is about as good as it gets for a horror movie with how many things they set up and how fast it moves and how they go from kind of bit to bit to establish like, holy shit. Oh my God. Um, there was a critic, John Kenneth year who was talking about back at the time when this movie came out, what if the Bible is correct? Um,
What if all the signs of the apocalypse are happening around about now? Would we believe them? Would we even notice? Yeah. This was somehow a theme in the seventies. What would it mean if real evil lived among us and we didn't know? Right. I don't know why that wasn't a theme in like the fifties.
Maybe as people were just more optimistic back then, or you just kind of went about your day to day or, you know, we're fighting world wars. We had bigger things to worry about. Sometimes there's like a, there's a little bit of a delay before culture properly reflects like what people are feeling. Yeah. Because I don't think necessarily that like, if you looked around today, like I think,
I think people are having a hard time grappling with how to properly reflect society in horror movies now. You see a couple, there was that movie Host that was really effective about...
channeling some like COVID era anxieties but like it gets it's difficult I think sometimes to turn around so fast where you're like this is an absolute mirror to how everybody's feeling right now and I can't speak because I was I was just born right after the omen so I don't really know although creepily I was just born right after the omen maybe you should check my scalp after Jesus yeah let's take a look but I think that I think that there's something about
The 70s really was like this wake up call, right? Like everybody came out of the late 60s and the sort of political upheaval, but also the kind of like the feeling that maybe we could make changes in the world. Yeah. And then you get into the 70s and you find out that the same old fuckers are still in charge and manipulating everybody. And you've got this war that's been going on and on and on. I think people really lost faith in humanity in that point.
Yeah, and it's funny how much of it trickled into movies and books. Because Stephen King is starting to hit right around here too. And he's really interested. Like Carrie comes out as a movie, same here as The Omen. That dips into some of the same themes. This girl has telekinetic powers. It's super, there's a huge religious cloud over that movie. And just in general, the relationship of religion to horror really feels like it peaked.
I think in the 70s. I just don't think religion has the same impact now because people are less religious. The Catholic Church fell apart in a lot of different ways. There's a really interesting thing that you really kind of, I didn't really think about until the last couple of times I've seen Omen, but especially this one for the pod, which is that early on, Brennan's like, go take communion. He tells Gregory Pex and it's like,
It was a solution. He doesn't even, it doesn't even occur to him. Like maybe he should be, he should have like this more of like a religious life so that like he can guard against this kind of thing from inserting itself into his, into his family. But I don't, you know, I don't know whether or not taking communion necessarily would have like been a foolproof measure against the antichrist. But it's interesting that like it attacks a guy who's kind of decayed to the point where he's like, I don't even really think about organized religion beyond weddings. Right.
Well, and then Carrie had that religious piece too. Yeah. Even in Amityville Horror, the priest comes to the house and then the voice like, get out. And then he goes blind immediately. But yeah, the religion over and over again in the 70s, early 80s was a huge part of these movies. And now it doesn't.
You know, we'll have Conjuring now. Conjuring, those are period pieces. Yeah, but I mean, like, those kind of movies now where it's like, we've got to fix the house, the haunted house, things like that. They're not really religious as much as there's some sort of fixer that doesn't necessarily have to be religious. Often what it is is there's been some kind of trauma in this house that needs to be, like, confronted if, like, you want to get past it. So, like, there's ghost...
You need to like solve this ghost's murder for it to get it to stop haunting you or whatever. Yeah. You know, that's going to have to happen to my house. Um, Gregory Peck. What if you quit doing, you were like, I have retired from podcasting to ghost hunt to solve the crime. I've got to solve my house and some others. Gregory Peck, 1962 Oscar winner. It's kill a mockingbird.
One of the 20 most famous actors ever? Yeah, like one of the great leading men in Hollywood history, probably. When he makes this movie, he's one of the top 10. I was going to ask you, what actor is the 2023 version of him? It's probably like... Hanks? Hanks might be a slight bit bigger. I was thinking maybe like...
It's like a Sean Penn kind of career level, but we crossed with Hanks. Yeah. I think leading man, just stable. Like when you're Atticus Finch that you, you become defined by that. Maybe like an older Chris Evans. Like, I mean, Chris Evans played like captain America. He's always going to be associated with a certain like moral fiber. I think the way that was, um,
That's what's kind of so cool. Robert Downey Jr.? No, because he's like a fast-talking shit-talker. I don't even know who... There was a weightiness and a leading man-ness to him. To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the most iconic movies of the 60s, and that was the great character in it. I just think after that, if he's in a movie like The Omen, you have to take it seriously. Gregory Peck's in this? Yeah, and that's what the genius move...
Of doing these genre movies the way they did with like such high quality performers and craftspeople working on them is that it takes like pulpy material that you have to take incredibly seriously. Like you can't hear the Jerry Goldsmith music in this movie and not be like, whoa, like a real fucking artist worked on this, you know? Yeah.
You know where we went to college, Gregory Peck, Craig? San Diego State. Oh, did he? Yeah. How is that not like the first thing you hear when you go to San Diego State? Yeah, how do you not fucking know that, Craig? He's like one of the 50th most famous actors ever. Because we have a lot of famous alum. Kawhi Leonard? Steven Strasburg? Tony Gwynn? Yeah. Marshall Falk? Gregory Peck, 1962 best actor winner. Didn't even know. You know what? I think I knew that.
So should have paid more attention to this movie. Uh, did he mention San Diego state in the movie? He was wearing a San Diego state sweatshirt. Tony Gwynn jersey. Yeah. The racquetball scene. He was wearing one. I don't think Tony Gwynn was really popping in 76 yet. This movie is directed by Richard Donner and he goes on a run. Yeah. I'm just going to read it for the audience. This starts the run. We go right from here to Superman. Two years later, you might've heard of it. Yeah. Superman two.
Inside moves, which you still haven't seen just because you're trying to hurt me. I'm sorry. I'm just going to do it for rewatchables because it's going to be the only way you have to see it. No, because I'll be like, we're doing inside moves and then you're going to have to watch it. It's like multiple scenes of vintage late seventies warriors. And you're not interested in this movie. I'm interested. I'll watch it. I'll watch it. Jesus. I've asked you like 10 times. He does the toy, which bombs rips off the Goonies and Lady Hawk in 85 and
Lethal Weapon, Scrooged, Lethal Weapon 2, Radio Flyer, Lethal Weapon 3, Maverick, Assassins, Conspiracy Theory, and Lethal Weapon 4. I'm going to say he earned a pretty coin at some point. It would have been cool, I think, maybe after Lethal Weapon 2 if he had done different movies because he was so good. I think at that point, he's like Dick Donner's just living in some massive beach house. He's good. He's like, all right, I'll do another one.
Also, cinematographer Don Gilbert. I know you're a fan of his work. Gilbert Taylor. Gilbert. I had Don Gilbert. Who's Don Gilbert? I don't know. Is he the coach for the late 70s warriors? Do you like both of them? Gilbert Taylor shot Dr. Strangelove. He shot Star Wars A New Hope. Also, Don Gilbert did some good stuff. Don Gilbert, one of the best to ever do it. Yeah. Talk about half-assed research. Copy and pasted cinematographer Don Gilbert.
This movie earned two Oscar nominations and it won best original score for your guy, Jerry Goldsmith. Yeah. His only Oscar win. Long time coming. Yes. Was it like an Embiid MVP type win for, or do you think it was a legit win? I mean, I think some of his best work even comes after this, right? Like I still think, like what year's Alien? Oh yeah. That's four years later. Yeah.
Can we deem beat MVP? Is it officially a travesty yet? Keep going. We got a tight schedule today. Official travesty yet or no? Relatchable scenes. Don't forget to. Is it one of the five biggest regrets of my voting career or one of the three? I can't decide. Did you vote for Russ or Kawhi? I can't remember. I voted for Harden that year. Oh. I did Harden two years in a row. I'm sure that helped. That guy. He's just, you know, some guy, he just wants to be happy. Are you the Antichrist? Keep going. Let's go. $2.8 million budget.
It made $61 million. It was the fifth biggest movie of 1976, which was a massive movie. This is essentially the Blumhouse model. Yeah. You know, they're still doing this, these numbers where it's like, we'll pay like, we're going to do like five to 20 budget. And then it makes a hundred. Also, if you told me like $2.8 million budget, I would have thought, I would have thought it was like 15.8. Yeah. But think about it. Like they probably like,
I mean, I know that, and they, apparently they spent a lot of money on the promotion of this movie, which I went back and looked at some of the, like the posters and stuff. And it was very effective. Yeah. Um, good trailers. It's not a lot of special effects in this, like the, the bullet, you know, there's some stunts, some Rottweiler stuff, a lot, a lot of Rottweiler acting, but hanging nanny, the hanging nanny is a great bit. That was like, that's a legitimate, there's a good zoo scene, uh, spawn the franchise, which we discussed Roger Ebert, two and a half stars, uh,
He said, the omen takes all of this terribly seriously as befits the genre that gave us Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. What Jesus was to the 1950s movie epic, the devil is to the 1970s. And so all of this material is approached with the greatest solemnity, I can barely say that word, not only in the performances, but also in the photography, the music, and the very looks on people's faces. So why did he only give it two and a half, do you think?
Vicky thinks it's too serious. I don't, you know, Roger's a story guy. Yeah. Apparently the antichrist wasn't enough of a story for him. He got picky. We didn't talk about Lee Remick, but I have thoughts on her. Okay. Later on for you. Okay. I think we'll make you uncomfortable. Today's most rewatchable scene is brought to you by the Home Depot. Make this holiday season something you want to replay again and again with new festive decor from the Home Depot. You decorate, do any Halloween decorations? Yeah, we put up some lights.
They've got Black Friday savings. Somebody around the corner from me went full, is I got basically a shrine to Michael Myers. From you or? No, around the corner from me in my house. Did a Michael Myers move? Like a shrine to him. He's like sitting in a giant chair and there's just all these cobwebs. It's awesome.
I feel like Halloween decoration has never been better. Like around my neighborhood, there's a couple houses where I'm like, you guys really went for it. Well, you know who else is going for it? The Home Depot. They've got Black Friday savings happening all month long. From artificial trees in every shape and size to big, bold animated pieces for your front yard at amazing values. It's all right there for your holiday taking. Visit homedepot.com to learn more. Most rewatchable scene.
Damien's fifth birthday party kind of went off the rails a little bit. There's no coming back from that. There was a Rottweiler and a nanny hanging. Yeah. Look at me, Damien. For you. The Rottweiler stares at the nanny.
Yes. And something happens. Communicate something to her. Psychically. This is yet another reason why I don't like Rottweilers. My least favorite dog. What a decade where the nanny could throw herself off the roof and commit suicide and then fly through the window, terrifying the housemaid and anything ever happens again in like that world. Like, how could you get back on the horse and be like, well, we got dinner reservations on Wednesday. Yeah. Kind of put that one behind us. Should we still say happy birthday? Yeah.
Now, Damien, cut the cake. Cut the cake. I was thinking a top 20 worst thing that could happen at your kid's birthday party. Top one. What's top two? The worst is like something happens to your kid. Number two is the nanny does that. Damien. One thing I like about it, it's a really good...
hanging where she actually like goes through the window but it's not like breakable glass window it's like old school thick glass that she goes through and you feel like somebody probably got hurt like they did something wrong yeah it's super creepy there's a moment before that happens though and um she's taking photographs with damien and the mom wants to wants damien uh-huh
And she's like, oh, I was just taking mom. And the mom's like, can I have them? And takes them. Almost feels like a scene was cut out. Like maybe the nanny was getting a little weird before that. I think it's just supposed to give us the implication. And this is really cool. We'll talk a lot more about this. So Donner's whole thing is that he wanted to maintain the air of...
ambiguity around like is this just the parents being overprotective or like oversensitive yeah something actually happening with Damien yeah and just like the handsy like kind of like like nannies with no sense of boundaries kind of thing going on that happens throughout this movie it's intentional to make you feel like I can't tell is is Lee Remick being nervy or is this like actually like bad child care
I don't know where you go in the next 15 minutes after the hanging nanny. Maybe because it takes a while for the cars to get there. Like, hey, kids, can you come over here so you don't have to see the lady dangling from the second floor of the house? It's just like if this happened, like I know that there is a little bit of a news story, but if this happened today.
like Biden would recall that ambassador. He wouldn't be like, why don't you just stay over in England and you just see if you can work the IRA thing out. You know, like it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be business as usual. He's at the office the next day. Yeah. And then it feels like it would have probably been a major news story too. Yeah. The worst thing I ever saw at either of my kids' birthday parties where there was a parent who was either drunk or on maybe a little, a little drug, little drug or some prescription drugs or something. I don't know what was going on, but we had a giant bouncy castle. Yeah.
And for some reason she decided to go in and she was jumping around and
And, but there were little kids there. It's like, the adults are not supposed to go in the bouncy castle with little kids. So we're kind of like, Hey, you gotta get out. And when she came out, she fell out of the bouncy castle and did like a, almost like a three 60 fall and then landed on her bag. It was just like, Oh my God, this is like the worst thing that's ever happened. You see the omen and it's like, Oh, that's how did that woman move on from it? Like what was her next party appearance? We kind of brought her over.
She was not invited the next year. Okay. That much brought her over, sat her down, tried to, I think we made her some coffee. Had it. Oh, it was like an intervention essentially. Yeah. It was like, why don't you sit this one out? We're going to, we're going to put in some of the bench. You know, we're just going to let Oubre play for a little bit. We're bringing Paul Reed if that's cool. Damien's fifth birthday party. And then he looks at the Rottweiler at the end. Yeah. Like, Oh,
Damien. Something's going on here. Next we watch, we'll see in the visit from the red eyed priest and Peck's office. He's killed once. He'll kill again. What accent is he doing here? Scottish? Uh, English, Irish. Yeah. I witnessed the birth. What do you know about my son? Everything. And what is that? I saw his mother.
I saw his mother. I saw his mother. She's a jackal. How many jackals have you interacted with? I was going to ask you a little bit about this. I mean, this is definitely a later for jackals. No question. Do they do jackals exist or they just exist? Oh, yeah, they exist. They exist, right?
Would not like to see a jackal at any point. Accept Christ each day. Drink his blood. The red-eyed priest fucking freaks me out. Next one. Boy, is this a good stretch. The mom arguing with the new nanny about Damien's got to go to church for the wedding. Great shot, Gordo. Nominee, the stairwell, like the banister going up and they're like connected by this like white thing. It's awesome. The nanny's like...
No, he's, it's probably a bad idea. He probably needs some rest. The mom's like, Hey man, car five minutes. Yeah. And then we're in the, we're in the car. And what do you think Carrie would do if the nanny tried to be like, yeah, he's not going to go to the wedding today. She'd be out. It'd be like, pack your bags. Yeah. Um,
So we're going toward the church and it's a good shot. It's in the car. It's a shot of the church. We're getting there. And then it cuts to the car and Damien pre seatbelts, car seats. He's just kind of sitting in front of his parents in the limo. And he has a look on his awesome. Damien's like riding shotguns. He's out. It's he's just fly through the window of the car, jib that it's breaks. And he's just staring at the,
At the church with the best look on his face. It's so scary and creepy. Um, it's also, I probably made a similar face when I had to go to church, but then he has to freak out. You saw an angel statue on the top. No, I just didn't let go. And it's your evil coursing through my grandmother used to make us go to church and was never a fan. But, um, that two minutes is awesome. And that mom for the first time, it's like, all right, something's going on. Yes. Yeah.
Welcome, sir. Good morning. I have that scene. Good music in that scene, too. The Windsor Safari scene. Where the mom's like, hmm, so weird. The giraffes just ran away from Damien like that. Yeah. Like they sprinted from him. That's strange.
Get in the car, just driving through the monkeys. I would honestly pay like a million dollars if somebody had punked you when Ben was like five and you took him to a zoo and the giraffes ran away. Oh my God. Still might happen. I might take him this weekend. Ben, stand next to the giraffe. I want to see something. Angry monkeys. Why is that scene so scary?
What is so scary about, about frightened baboons who look like they're all about to mobilize a counterattack? Because I think it's like this idea that there's almost this, uh, unhearable frequency happening. Like the same thing with like the dog showing up the same thing with like, just like, why is everything feel just a little bit off? I mean, honestly, once Damien's like pulling in the mom's hair and like scratching her up, I'd be like, we, we need,
We need to talk about Kevin. Maybe a child counselor. Yeah. But, uh, yes. I don't know if there's a lot of family therapy in 1976. Probably not in England. Yeah. Just like to take your kid to the pub day. Yeah. Right. Give him a little taste of whiskey. Maybe that'll settle him down. The, uh, the production, they couldn't figure this is half-assed in research. They couldn't figure out how to have the baboons attack. So they put food in the car and that didn't really work.
They put a baby baboon in the backseat with a zoo official thinking that would make the baboons mad. That didn't work. And then they took the alpha baboon and put that in the backseat.
And when they did that, that made the baboons crazy and they all attacked the car. Yeah. And, uh, apparently the Remick, the mom in this movie was like genuinely terrified. That's just great problem solving. Yeah. You know, just keep, keep workshopping it. What about the alpha baboon? What a great set. Um, that's like Spolster coming out of a timeout. He's just like, I'm just going to get, get my guys in position. Craig, when, uh,
What do you think of this era of the mid-70s when we just got in a car and drove around a zoo and there's just live monkeys and baboons everywhere? That's Lion Country Safari in Florida. Oh, they still, oh, of course, it's in Florida. That makes sense. You know, I think I would give it a shot. You would? Yeah, that sounds fun to me. Yeah, it's pretty cool. When you're a kid, you're like, holy shit. Yeah, I remember doing some version of it in Massachusetts and just thinking it was,
Probably not great for the animals to just have these cars just kind of driving through. There's a couple of parts of Lion Country Safari where you're just like sitting there waiting for the animals to emerge and they didn't ever do because they're probably depressed about being in Florida. But yeah. Well, that first 35 minutes is just a clinic. We didn't even really, I didn't mention it as a rewatchable scene, but the nanny showing up and being like, oh yeah, the agency sent me. And it's like, we didn't call an agency. Yes, mom. I'm sorry, but we're a little bit confused.
Oh, why is that? Well, we don't know how you got here. Oh, oh, the, uh, the agency. The agency? Well, yes, they, uh, they read in the paper about the, about your first nanny. So they, uh, they sent you another. Well, that's it. Well, I'll call to confirm that. Oh, um, here are my references. Thank you very much. I got tons, tons of stuff on bail. We didn't, if somebody shows up to work at my house,
And I'm like, how'd you get here? And they go, the agency called me. And I said, we didn't call an agency. I'm probably going to ask them to leave. I think it's a pretty fair tip. Yeah. Because then just anyone could show up in their house. Like, the agency sent me. But this is like, up until...
I don't know when, but for like, I remember like my, my mom used to tell me about like my grandfather to like stay in hotels overseas would just like write the hotel a letter and be like, we will be staying there on Wednesday through Friday and like then show up in France or whatever to like, and just hope the room was there. Yep. I believe you got my letter. We'd love to stay in this room. Simpler times. So yeah, if a nanny showed up and was like,
Agency sent me You'd probably be like Alright Cool There's your room Yeah Try not to take him To the safari That didn't work out for us Keep away from monkeys Giraffes and Rottweilers Just a couple notes on Damien Don't feed him after midnight Kind of have him On the gremlin diet Watch out with the shampoo Because he's got a 666 In his head Next rewatchable scene The priest gets killed By bad weather Um
Bad weather deaths are always really good for horror movies when the weather turns and you know something bad's gonna happen. This is a fucking terrifying scene. It's...
First of all, I don't know how they had all these special effects in 76. This is Dick Donner and Gilbert Taylor and Don Gilbert. Did Don Gilbert give any feedback? Absolutely cooking. Absolutely in their bag. Well, we have the foreshadowing of the pole going through shoulders of the picture. I love the picture foreshadowing. It's fun. But yeah, I don't know how they did this in 76, how they made it so dark, how they made it so like crazy and tumultuous. It's just really good. It's scary as shit. Yeah. And then, of course, he can't get in the church. Also, like it.
It's great use of London. Like these parks that they have, these old churches that are very much like you walking by something and it's like, oh, it's been there since the 1700s. That's pretty amazing. Next scene, Damien knocks mom over the railing. You know it's coming. You still don't think he's going to do it. And then it's like, oh yeah, he's the Antichrist. He'll probably do this. I have creepy cemetery nighttime field trip, which includes a jackal skeleton and Rottweilers. Yeah.
No way they're escaping those Rottweilers, by the way. Zero. No, it feels like they die. This is from one of the synopsis of the movie in Damien's mother's grave, Robert and Keith find a jackal carcass. And then the next plot, a child skeleton with a shattered skull. Robert realizes that the child is his own son murdered. So Damien can take his place. A pack of Rottweilers drives Robert and Keith from the cemetery.
Talk about an understatement. I know. Drive them from the cemetery. I would say like at one point he gets impaled. Yeah. That scene is shy. I know you probably liked how some of the stuff was shot. Yes. The use of framing stuff from behind a banister is,
from behind a tree. Like the idea that something is watching these characters for the first three quarters of the movie so that when the evil is actually out front, you're like, oh, like this is, these people have been spied on. These people have been observed for a long time. The nanny kills the mom. I have that one. Nice little touch with the white veil. Yep.
There's a decapitation in this movie that I think I always forget every time I watch it. They really go for it. You know what? It's about as good as it gets in the 70s. I was going to say, like, has there been a better decapitation? I think that usually what happens with decapitations is you get the swing and you get the head rolling. That's sort of the. You don't get the actual just head coming off the body like this. Yeah. Really good stuff.
Somehow not the most disturbing thing in this movie. Although it is to David Warner. He says he couldn't watch it. Really? Yeah. Couldn't watch himself get decapitated. I would be pretty weird to see on screen. And then I have Peck versus then he has to go back and get her. He's got to take on the nanny and the dog. Yeah. He's got to check out the, uh, the six, six, six in the forehead. Not sure how, uh, the antichrist didn't wake up. There's getting deep sleep. Yeah. Deep sleeping. We're having good dreams.
And a great job by the howling dog trapped in the basement. Peck escapes. And then we get the final shot where it's like, Oh my God, he's going to murder this child in a church. Nope. He's not. What do you have for most rewatchable scene? Um, I think the most rewatchable scene for me is it's really tight between the nanny's death and Brennan's death. Hmm.
The nanny's death, the fifth birthday party is really one of the fucking creepiest things I've ever seen. All the shots to of like the kids on the carousel and the way that they use the sound design with the kids voices kind of like screaming. Yeah, it just feels so on edge. You realize that point like there's something really nefarious and malevolent present. Yeah, the Rottweiler. So I'm going to go with I'm going to go with the nanny death, the fifth birthday party.
I wish it had been longer. Me too. One of the things about this movie that makes it so good is that the scenes are not very long. It's, it's not, you know, people say like, oh, I love a two hour movie. I love like two hours or less. It's not necessarily even the runtime. It's the pace. Yeah. The scenes are not that long. No. What's your, what's yours? Birthday party. Okay. I really liked the scene when he doesn't want to go to church though.
Really solid, a solid 90 seconds. Once again, today's most rewatchable scene brought to you by the home Depot. The best parts of a great movie tend to fly by just like holiday season. So don't wait until the last minute to cash in on the home Depot's black Friday savings all month long. You can save an amazing items from artificial trees to bold animated pieces for your yard. Make this holiday season when you want to replay forever. Is it home depot.com to learn more? What's age the best.
What do you have? I always feel like I go first. Yeah. You know what? I should throw it to you first. Cause I make a list and I'm, I'm Jonesing all the best points. CR. I'm going to throw, I'm going to, I'm going to set you up. I'm going to throw it to you down low. Is there anything better than a horror movie starting on June 6th at 6 AM?
I'm like that college basketball coach who's like, let's go! It's so awesome. I have that as well. As soon as he realized it's 666, you're like, fucking the devil is here. I remember I wrote a column for Page Two about Nomar when he was on the Dodgers.
How are you going to play in this plane? Playing the Red Sox on 666. Oh, man. At Dodger Stadium. And that was the whole premise of my call. What was like June 6th at 6 p.m.? Yes. Okay. No, no, but it was June 6th, 2006. Oh, God. It was literally 666. I think that was the premise. Anyway, I wrote about how I never would have guessed four years earlier Nomar was going to be in the Dodgers on 666. What else do you have? Um...
Animals can always send something wrong. Just love that as like a, it's just a great way to detect. Even giraffes. Yeah. The giraffes are underrated. You just think they're sitting up there chewing trees. No, we actually hit a bunch of mine. Like Kathy looking like a bride when, when a bailout arrives at the hospital with the veil kind of going down. Um, and just, and just the pound for pound filmmaking and the music. Mm hmm.
Super creepy. I have the little kid actor I think is great. And they use him like Jaws. He never talks really. They don't overexpose him so that the acting is bad. He doesn't really say anything except for, no, mommy, no. And he says like, daddy, lift me up. So apparently they looked at like 500 kids and they really liked this kid because...
Part of how they were casting was they were telling him, telling the kids to like get flip out, get angry and see. And this one kid like attacked Richard Donner and they were like, this is the one. Um, but he had blonde hair and, uh, I think blue eyes. So they had to like darken his hair, gave him like the creepier eye contact lenses. Yeah. And his face is just super antichristy. Like, can you imagine him having, imagine him having, having him as a kid in real life?
I heard your son's doing some acting. Yeah. Yeah. He's in this movie. They picked him out of a group of 500 to be. Yeah. He's going to play the Antichrist. It's coming out in June. And then you're just like, all right, see you, buddy. See you tomorrow. Yeah. I have no idea if he's going to be standing over your bed. 1970s London. Great times. Yeah. Who was the best soccer player in the world in 1976 in London? Who was the Beckham? I mean, was that Georgie Best's era? I'm not even sure. I think it might have been.
Just stay with me on this one. What's aged the best being attracted to women from the 1960s and 1970s who are now they're old or dead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Lee Remick. Just a smoke show. Yeah.
She's great. She sadly passed away when she was 55 in the late 80s. She just looks great. She, I think, she was a really accomplished actress. She got her best Oscar nomination. She won a Tony. If you ever do a Patreon, Bill Simmons' 1950s and 60s smoke shows would be, honestly, I don't even know. I'll start making a side business. It's like a charity thing. But it's so funny to be like, you guys see Patricia Neal in HUD? Jesus Christ.
Like Angie Dickinson, some of her 70s stuff. I'm like, man, Angie Dickinson. Fucking bringing it. But I always thought that was funny. The casting of the two Damians is great. I love the, I mentioned the foreshadowing of, from photos that something bad's going to happen to a character always works for me. The nanny, when she meets Damian and she says, have no fear, little one. I'm here to protect thee. Super creepy. Oh, I had a similar thing. When you're the spawn of Satan, it feels like the animals know. Good thing, good reason to have a dog.
They'll know if somebody's in there. Which one of your dogs do you think would be most sensitive to Ben being the Antichrist? Jessie. She seems to know. She's the one that won't go up on the third floor. Do you think Olivia would just be like, whatever? She's that. Olivia's going to die soon. Jessie won't go on the third floor. Olivia's like almost 15. She doesn't know what's going on. I wrote down for what stage the best wacky religious freakout shrines and diaries. Oh, yeah.
Kind of a cousin of what we talked about last week with the JFK. His sort of archival. Yeah. Especially when it's religious, it's just creepier. I like when priests in movies get traumatized and lose one of their senses.
When they can no longer speak. Yes. Or in Amityville Horror, they can't see. Like, they see something so bad, it literally shuts off one of their five senses. Yeah. That's Spoleto at the end. He's the guy who swapped the babies, and then at the end, he's in the monastery with the burned-up face. They're like, he can't see. So, 666. Yeah.
It wasn't pop culture-y until this movie. The whole concept of the triple six. The market beast? Yeah. Okay. Wasn't really a thing. I mean, it was a thing, but not a thing. Pop culture made it a thing. It's interesting when horror movies mainstream some of these ideas. I think that people take a lot of liberties. I don't know this for a fact because I'm not a big...
I have not read the new Testament a while is book of revelations. They take a lot of liberties with that. Right. I think they do. Yeah. Where they'll just like, if you write it in a certain like biblical poet, poetic cadence, you could just basically say that's in the book of revelations. Yeah. Page is in the 500 somewhere. And when the Rangers play the diamond backs in the world series. Yeah.
The oceans will rise. It could happen this weekend. Friday the 13th did this too. I feel like Friday the 13th was a thing, but then the movie came out and it became an even bigger thing. So sometimes that happens. I specifically got married on Friday the 13th because of that. I've never been afraid of Friday the 13th or ghosts in my house. There's a tweeted scene at the end. Yeah. When, uh, when Peck leaves with Damien right at the tail end, he escapes. They filmed another scene where the dog attacked the car.
And you can find it on YouTube. Didn't they do another scene where the nanny is coming out? That's all part of the same scene. Both of them get out. The dog attacks the car. The dog headbutts through the windshield. And then Peck stabs it with a screwdriver in the head and kills the dog. And then runs over the nanny.
And they were like, Gregory Peck is like, I was fucking Atticus Finch. Yeah. He's like, dude, how about he just escapes? So they cut that. So there you go. The Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. The music kicks in for that shirt when they're driving to church for that wedding. Yeah. You hear like the little hum of it and then it like, it's obviously Tani is the, I think the music. Yeah. You would know it because that's what Bob Kraft used to punch, pump into the Patriots locker room. Right. So does this.
The Big Kahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Drink. I just have question marks for this. I couldn't think of anything. Not a lot of eating. No. Feels like there could have been an eating scene, though, where Damien's just, all he wants to do is eat raw ground beef. That's weird. Remember, that's Mia Farrow in Rosemary. Yeah. She's hungry for raw meat. Den of Thieves Benihana Award for Scene Stealing Location. I got the cemetery. I got the Bugenhagen ruins, like where he's digging stuff up. Yeah, that's good.
Great shot. Gorder award. Most cinematic shot. What do you got? I love, uh, the different tracking shots when Brennan is like in the park before he gets to the church and like all the leaves are blowing and it goes that like crane shot up into the trees looking down on him. And it's like, oh shit.
There's a shot right after they get away from the dogs in the cemetery where they have one last shot of the dogs behind the gate and there's like the moon behind it. It's super creepy. This is actually just like an amazingly well made movie and the cinematography is fantastic. There's a lot of cool deep focus stuff too where it's like, you know, one figure up the front in the foreground and then the clarity of the figure in the background. It's really great.
The Vincent Chase Award for are we sure this character was actually good at his job. The fucking ambassador. Yeah. Guy can't even fire his nanny. This guy's our conduit to another country. His wingmen are like, hey, yeah, you know, we need you to go to Saudi Arabia and settle that thing. And he's like, nope, I just can't. Right. I have personal stuff. And it's just like, well, I don't know. We make it as easy as possible here. Private planes. Got a nice couple of houses, you know. He's terrible.
Butch's girlfriend award wink-leak in the film. This has always bothered me with the omen where the nanny's like, no, no, the dog's going to stay. And they're like, get rid of the dog tomorrow. And then it's like a day later. It's like, oh, the dog's still here. Like, just fireable offenses day after day that rot while they're still in the house. Like, where is everybody in this? And why doesn't he have...
like some sort of chief of staff who's like, Hey, I got this fucking nanny that won't go to my dog. Right. Like that's a weird, that's a whole weird sequence that I think is so wonderfully ambiguous is like when he comes home and she's like, don't worry. Like Mrs. Horton should take care of Damien. Yeah. He goes back. He's like, where's, where are the Hortons? And she's like, they left. And it's, he's just like, sounds good. All right. I'm going to go to Rome. Sounds good. The Yankees are on. The dog part is strange.
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What's aged the worst? The mentioned earlier, but the impact casting of Gregory Peck was a big deal back then. This would be like, I think Hanks is a decent analogy for like, if this is a horror movie and Tom Hanks was the ambassador. Yeah. That's what it would feel like. What else did you have? Uh, Gregory Peck singing happy birthday. Happy birthday. I was like, you know what? Maybe not the most natural dad. Yeah. He's like, I'm at, I'm Atticus Finch. I'm not singing this. And, uh, what's also aged the worst is people bringing physical letters of reference to
Where somebody's like, well, do you have any references? And it's like, right here. I didn't write these myself at all. That's how we hired Craig. Craig showed up on your doorstep with a little leather valise. I have a letter from Tony Gwynn. Gregory Peck. And Kawhi Leonard. Woods aged the worst. The no seatbelts for little kids is hilarious. I love that in every movie. So the mom's fall.
Out of the hospital is very 1970s bad special effects. They just didn't have the effects like that. Lee Remick maybe taking advantage of load management. Yeah. She didn't want to do the stunt because Ellen Burstyn had gotten really hurt in The Exorcist. And Lee Remick was like, I'm not going over this railing. She's like, I'm too smokin' to go over this railing. Which is actually one of the only kind of funky parts of the movie among, I guess there are a couple, like The Antichrist. But she basically is on this railing
stool goes over the railing. You don't see her topple much and then she's hanging on. Somehow she's like fallen but like gripped the banisters. So, yeah. So, the mark of the beast in 1976, apparently people didn't really understand that part because it was so not...
kind of not known or thought about. And they learned about that during the thing. But apparently the audiences were confused initially. Wasn't there also a thing where like when they came out of like screenings, I read something where it was like there was some like when you when they walked out, there was a sign outside that said it's June 6th at 6 a.m. or something. Yeah. So like kind of just to remind them when everything had sort of started. Was there a better title for this movie? I don't think so. It was originally or kicked around that they were going to call it Birthmark.
yeah i like the omen i have one more what's aged the worst yeah and this this kind of i don't even know if it's aged the worst but let's just talk it out they david salter the guy wrote the book wrote the screenplay wrote a novelization of of of the screenplay like right before the movie came out so they had it ready to go and it has a lot more in there about uh brennan and spoleto the two priests yeah and basically how like brennan is like
really like a fallen priest who gets hooked up with this satanic covenant of, you know, of priests in Rome. Yeah. We're trying to bring about the Antichrist. They've tried multiple times over history and been stopped. But there's a lot of really good stuff in it about like what these guys are all about. And it's a little unclear when you get deeper into the movie because you think Brennan is trying to help Gregory Peck, but then he also has this 666 sign on his thigh. So like what was...
What was his evil act before this? And the book goes into more detail. And I think, I think it's pretty interesting. I didn't understand the 666 on the thigh. It's something that emerges once you've like dedicated yourself to the devil, I guess. Would have liked better explanation. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Best quote. It's all for you, Damien. Definitely. Hottest take a word. Do you have one?
Let's say you find out Ben's the Antichrist. Yeah. You're supposed to kill him with the seven daggers of Megadoh or whatever it is. But do you take the phone call to find out if there's any way to play it to your advantage? It's a great call. Is there any use for Damien where you're just like, well, this sucks. You know, the world's probably going to end, but what if...
What if we just played it this way? Like if I negotiate with Damien. Yeah, exactly. Damien, I know who you are. It's out in the open now. Can I get profit participation? What about gambling? Can we do, there's a world series coming up. Yeah. Would you, would you ask if you had in, in the eighties, if you had, if you had gotten this, if you found out that your child was the antichrist, would you, would you take a red socks world series at that point?
If that meant... How can you say I didn't? Can't be ruled out. Here's my hottest take. I don't mind giving ideas out to the public every once in a while, not profiting in them. I think this is the greatest horror IP that nobody has properly leveraged because... And basically they've done it, but they did it incorrectly with the movies, with the Omen 1, 2, and 3. Then they remade the original Omen. To me, this is like the crown. This should be like a five-season...
arc of Damien. And season one is age five. Season two is 13, the boarding school. Season three is him as like an up and coming politician. Season four is like his full bloom as like running, running for president, maybe even controlling the country. And then season five is like his godfather three reckoning of being the antichrist and
And people trying to stop him. I can't believe nobody's done this yet. I would rather watch them as movies because I think if you were like, I have to watch 50 hours before we get to the inevitable conclusion. But I think you could go so many sideways with it. You could basically have a season that was like House of Cards. Yeah. I mean, basically, that's what House of Cards was. The guy was evil. But I just feel like there's more potential with the IP. And they did this...
They did all, they remade all these movies in the two thousands. Like they did the omen. They did Amityville horror. They did basically every movie that we liked. They just longest yard. They did all these classics and,
Some of them made money. Some of them didn't. And then they just kind of gave up on the IP after that. This case, I think there's real IP. Yeah. You really have to have stones to do these movies, though. The thing about these 70s movies. Because you might go to hell? Well, no, it's just that like they weren't necessarily thinking in terms of franchises and they were also willing to say pretty dark things about humanity. Yeah. And I think that ultimately like movies nowadays try to be more affirmative and try to like kind of pull out of it a little bit.
But like Damien being Damien standing next to the president in the last shot is like truly chilling shit. Would you do that? You know, like I don't I can't remember how the 2006 one ends, but I don't think it had the same impact. That was a little unclear how he ended up next to the president from this ambassador. Because Gregory Peck is friends with the president. They talk about that when they're walking. He's like, you're a good friend, the president. Like, I think there's whatever. I don't think the president's showing up for the ambassador. And I think the implication is that
Gregory Peck's character, Thorne, is on a kind of path to the presidency. Yeah. This hot first lady wife. Casting what ifs, there were a ton. Oliver Reed was in it at one point. William Holden, who ended up being in number two. They made an actual offer to Charlton Heston, which I think is pretty interesting. Yeah. Probably a very similar movie. Maybe a little more campy. It's really cool how when you go back and look through these people's filmographies,
how often there will be somebody like Charlton Heston or Gregory Peck that you associate with, like, biblical epics or, like, these really, like, moral, upright lawyers or cowboys. But they still do these fucked-up movies. Like, they still do Planet of the Apes or, like, a Sam Peckinpah movie or The Omen. And it was just... It's great when they show that kind of range and that kind of taste. Yeah, do you feel like Hanks' version of that would have been, like, doing Da Vinci's Code? And it's like, that's not really a stretch. Yeah, I mean, he hasn't really played... I mean, I think he makes...
adventurous choices like Cloud Atlas, but I don't think he ever makes like, I'm going to play somebody that's, this part is going to say something really fucked up about society. Well, Heston turned it down. He didn't want to spend an entire winter alone in Europe and he was worried that the film might be exploitative if not handled correctly. The same guy made Planet of the Apes. That's it. Everything else we mentioned. Yeah, Roy Scheider I think would have been a good one. He was up for it. This was during the run of Roy Scheider. Yeah.
The Ruffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge overacting award goes to the Red Eyed Priest. Yeah. Father Brennan. I thought for sure you would imitate him, but I guess Fridays. I did. I did when it was like. I thought you'd really go for it. Your mother was a jackal! Deanne Waiters award, the first nanny. Really bringing it for three minutes. I got, do you think Bailock's in it too much? Yeah, I did. Okay. So then I'm going to go with Leo McCurran as Bugenhagen. Okay.
We haven't talked about David Warner yet. I guess he's in it too much in the second half of the movie to really count as a Dion, but he's pretty awesome. We're going to talk about him right now because he wins the Best That Guy Award. Because everyone in this movie is a that guy or that girl because it's from almost 50 years ago. But David Warner was a that guy...
who then graduated and became David Warner. And then eventually became that guy from Titanic. Yep. But I don't think anyone under 40 knows his name's David Warner. Probably not. So he's like belatedly now with that guy again. I had Don Fellows, who is in the office with Gregory Peck when Brendan first comes to visit him. Yeah, that's like a deep cut. And Don Fellows is one of the guys from the government who hires Indiana Jones and Raiders. Oh. Yeah.
Does he know cinematographer Don Gilbert or no? Don Gilbert used to hang out a lot, yeah. Recasting couch. Was thinking 2023 version. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. But do you gender swap it and make Taylor Swift the ambassador? Yeah, and Travis Kelsey's Lee Remick. Yeah, the Omen Taylor's version? Yeah.
The prophecies say probably be a blockbuster. If a famous football player and a pop star, Mary. Yeah. And then have a kid who knows how fast they're in a research. Damien Taylor's version. Taylor's cut. Um, this movie was inspired by this advertising executive named Robert Mungin, who'd read a book called the light, the late great planet earth and speculated to a film producer named Harvey Bernard, uh,
about the possibility that the Antichrist would be walking around the earth right now in the form of a child. And they ended up getting David Seltzer to write the script and the rest was history. So Billy Whitelaw played the nanny, famous English actress, famous English actress, who was Samuel Beckett's like muse for...
A quarter of a century? You a big Beckett guy? Not really, but respect. Yeah. Respect the work. Writer, writer. One of the better Irish playwrights, I think. Yeah. I had him ranked fourth. Yeah. No, I just know the name. The Rushmore of Irish playwrights. He's on there. But that was like her partner and she was this really, really, really well-respected English-Irish like in that whole world. And she apparently like imbued this character with a lot more like obvious...
menace than Donner and Donner at one point was even thinking about cutting the character yeah because he basically wanted it to be like much more up to the viewer as you went through the film as to whether or not Damien was just a disturbed child or actually evil she's really creepy she sure is I can't believe we've done two pieces of half-assed internet research and we haven't touched on one of your pet passions of the rewatchables which is cursed productions
Go for it. So this is one of the all-time, like, I don't know how I would deal with this in the moment kind of things where it's like, there's so much bad shit happened to this production and people who worked on it. And it starts out with the IRA bailout
Donner's Hotel. There was a crashing of the plane that the crew wanted to board but had to cancel because of the scheduling conference. So they were on, they were supposed to be on a plane. They canceled that flight and that plane crashed. Peck and the screenwriter's plane got hit by lightning and the Omen special effects director, John Richardson, had an eerie car accident where he died on the set of A Bridge Too Far.
So like all these people who were involved in, I got this all from Cinephilia and beyond, but it was just like, it was doomed. Like it was really dark. And Lee Remick died pretty early. She was 55, had kidney cancer. I'm not sure if that's related, but yeah, that's, that's creepy. And Poltergeist was pole position for that conversation, but that's,
up there. I'd horror movies that have cursed production. It's weird. Really freaked me out. And they usually have some sort of theme like this, right? Yeah. I'm with you. If you, cause, and, and the fact that like the priest in this movie essentially gets chased by lightning into the, into the courtyard of the church anyway, like have lightning hit the plane. Apex mountain, Gregory Peck. No. Lee Remick. Maybe as she didn't get nominated for an Oscar, but I think this is the most successful movie hers, right?
Yeah, but this is like the biggest movie. So I don't know what the answer is for her. The Antichrist? I don't know if this was Apex Mountain. I still feel like it's Rosemary's. Yeah. How about, would you go Possessed Kids riding tricycles or big wheels? I had Creepy Kids. The This or The Shining? The exact same thing. I had Creepy Tricycle riding. I'd go Shining. Me too. Rottweilers? I can't think of another Rottweiler movie. Jackals? Well, Day of the Jackal, but you don't get an actual jackal.
It's just a nickname for the assassin. Evil nannies. I'm still going hand that rocks the cradle. It's a good one. Yeah. Best racehorse name. I just, Damien Thorne is solid. Damien is a great racehorse. Yeah. Yeah. I had a Damien question for you. Actually. Did this movie remove any possibility of
of naming your kid Damien for like 20 years and now Dame Lillard brought it back. But we really call him Dame and not Damien. This is a great question. Craig, were you to have a son, would Damien just be completely crossed off the list because of this? Yeah. Okay. Fully. Right? That's how I felt, but Damien Lillard brought it back and nobody seems to care. There's been a couple other Damiens too over the years. I don't feel like it's like Adolph was like a non-starter. Here's another question. There's a shelf life. Maybe 20 years. Would Damien Lillard
Like, would you have been as scared of Damien Thorne if they called him Dame Thorne? Omen 2, maybe. Dame Thorne. Omen 2, Dame Time. Great stuff. Kickstart the school year with Apple Gift Card. You can send it via email or send a physical card to your loved ones.
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So we don't really get into any, any Christ shit with Damien until his fifth birthday party. What was going on from ages like two, three and four? Like he never hit somebody with a Tonka truck. I think it's the idea that like evil starts to mature. Yeah. But that's, I would love to get a little bit of, of an insight of like what toddler Damien was doing. Didn't push anyone down the stairs at one point. How many, how many nannies did they run through? Yeah. Yeah.
We mentioned the interview process with Mrs. Bailock. Wasn't too enthused on that one. Oh, you do have references. Okay. How did Peck recover from impaling his left shoulder on a rusty cemetery gate? And then just the rest. He's fine in the next scene. He's such a gamer. Carrying Damien around. Do you know how much that would hurt?
to have a stake of a cemetery go literally through your shoulder and your arm and stick up and then you have to pull it out. Yeah. Like, first of all, your baseball season's over. Like, you're not pitching for another 18 months, I don't think. There's ligament damage. They haven't invented the Tommy John for that one yet. It's a clear and immediate staph infection. Last pick in NITS is just the name Damien.
Was that a common name back then in the 70s? What's so creepy about the name Damien? I think it's the single creepiest name you could have given a potential anti-Christ. Yeah, I think it's like if the nanny is standing on the balcony and she goes, it's all for you, Bobby! It doesn't have the same, it's all for you, Craig! It doesn't have like the same vibe, right? Like Damien has a kind of ancient...
feel to it. It feels like an old, just feel sinister, evil name. Any other pick and it's for you. Um, there's a lot of information that's unnecessarily conveyed in like riddles, poems,
Yeah. And biblical scripture. Like if I'm Brennan and it's really important for me that like this guy does what I tell him to do. I'm not doing it in the most bleary eyed psychedelic. Like I'm just quoting. I'm quoting revelations and reading poems to you and giving you riddles. Like I would just be like, here's exactly what you have. Here's the 10 point plan to stop Damien. Yeah.
What was it? Was Bailock possessed? Is that what we're? No, they just all work for it. Like they have all decided to give their post dates of, of hell. Like what was she doing? It's like how we formed the ringer. What was, what was Bailock doing the first like 40 years of her life? That's a great question. And I have that in where it's like, I was going to say that this would be a great for sequel prequel prestige TV is, uh,
She's part of this like coven of of rebel priests who are working. She was a nun. She was like Sister Mary Teresa in the book, I guess, or something like that. And they're all like sowing religious and political discord in the world because to create like the right atmosphere for Satan. So in the coven chat room, somebody was like, hey, good news. The jackal gave birth. Yeah.
They got ambassador. Anybody here want to be a nanny for a couple of years? Go to nanny school. Five years from now, you're going to step in here. I had prestige TV for the sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all by cast are untouchable. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Catherine on Steve Buscemi, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, or Philip Baker hall. I did think Sam Jackson and the David Warner role would be great.
It did need somebody to be like, man, what the fuck is going on here and do Sam Jackson things? I don't know. I was imagining what would happen though if Wayne Jenkins took Damien to the zoo. God damn, Damien! I didn't know I was watching Dr. Dolittle! You got these giraffes running crossing routes like you're Todd Munkin! You're fucking Rottweiler! We need to check out that 666 birthmark on the back of your head because we're going to hell a long fucking time, big boy!
Great stuff. Just one Oscar. Who gets it? Jerry Goldsmith. Yeah, I'm with you. Well, he did get it. Probably unanswerable questions. Would a mother instinctively know that their baby had died and then been replaced by a different baby? Because I feel like my wife would have been on this immediately. I think there's some sort of instinctual...
thing where you just kind of know. All people do with their babies is like, oh, she has your nose, but she has her eyes. There's just a constant evaluation of who the baby looks like more. I feel like they would just... The mom knows. There's weird mom superpowers. I just feel like Lee Remick would have figured it out sooner. She's probably getting hit on so much, she just couldn't think straight. Was Spoleto the guy, you know, the priest who does the swap in the beginning? Yeah. The original Picasso of the trade machine? Yeah.
So that guy, like he, he's like borderline the most evil person in this movie. Yeah. He's like, here's a newborn child. Yeah. Takes a jackal. Yeah. Birth to the antichrist and gives it to an ambassador from the United States. He's pretty bad. He'd get canceled. I had that in unanswerable questions and it's literally unanswerable, but how does a jackal become pregnant with the antichrist? Don't know. Does somebody have to have sex with the jackal? Does it just happen spiritually? Yeah.
Where do you find jackals? I don't know. I mean, are jackals prevalent in Italy? Are they just walking around? Like, do you have any friends who would say like, hey, you got to come over. We just adopted a jackal. Can you just real quick, are jackals like, where do they live? Feels like this feels like an Australia, New Zealand type of situation. I don't like jackals. Open savannas, deserts, grasslands. Arizona then. Don't like jackals. I had, where did Mrs. Bailock come from? Hell. But maybe you're right. She was the coven chat room. Yeah. She's on the boards.
I had one more unanswerable, but I'm not going to ask it. It's too controversial. Why? Do it. We can cut it. Is this really a movie about abortion? Yeah. I mean, I think that's the whole... It's awesome. It's a good question to ask because... It's like three years after Roe v. Wade. Yeah. And is that kind of what this is? Like...
How far would your childbirth have to go before? And on the flip side, there's like a kind of more conservative attitude about it where Gregory Peck's character doesn't want her to get the abortion. Yeah. And then that there's that feeling that like they didn't have their child. Like there was something sin in sin about like their child. Like she was never supposed to have a child.
Best double feature choice with this movie is clearly Omen 2, which has a couple of unbelievable scenes in it. It's not nearly as good as Omen 1, but there's some really good ones. And then Kid in Omen 2.
Is equally creepy. It's a teenage, teenage Dame is Dame time is fucking scary. Yeah. And it's, uh, it's got a great twist at the end. Yeah. Um, I love the Dame, the, the Damien Omen to twist, but it's worth noting that Damien to, or Omen to basically, uh,
uh, redoes the first one where like Damien is living with, uh, Gregory Peck's character's brother, William Holden. Um, and it's William Holden and it's essentially the same. It's like kind of like the same premise. Whereas David Salter wrote the screenplay was like, had I done a sequel, I would have had Damien be adopted by the president. Right. Damien's living in the white house. Big mistake. Well, our guy, William Holden, who died, I think, uh,
Two or three years after that movie came out, you can feel the cigarettes and the alcohol in him by the late 70s. So it's not, can't say that was one of his greatest performances. The Andy Redd Award, we pretty much have. What happened the next day? Yeah, we had, because we have Omen 2 as the Andy Redd Award. But I would love to see the job posting for British Ambassador. Get to live in the same house. We've cleaned up the nanny. Yeah.
There might be a dog in the basement. So this is a rare one for me. The what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? I'm good. I have a no thank you. I have the seven daggers of Muggy Doe. I don't want anything from this movie, especially with the curse production. I'm out. No, because if you get the daggers, you're always ready. I'm good.
The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. This is pretty clear. If your wife gives birth to a baby who dies, don't replace the baby with a different baby and don't tell her. Yeah. Just don't do that. If you want to just boil it down, check your kid's scalp. Scalp check, always great. Who won the movie for you? Satan himself? Yeah, I was kind of wondering whether evil could win a movie. Like, there's like the overwhelming sense of evil in this movie. But Greg Peck.
You're giving this one to Greg Peck? Well, we've never given it. San Diego State graduate? We've never given it to a force, you know? Can I make a case for the kid who plays Damien? Harvey Stevens? Yeah. As the single scariest child actor we've ever had. Do you think of anyone scarier than him? Scarier than Danny in The Shining? Yeah.
I think it's probably evil. You're probably right. It's the first time we've given them who won the movie. You know, the thing about the people who believe in evil, if you believe in evil, this is the movie for you. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you know who doesn't believe in evil? Craig Horlbeck, our producer. Yeah, this is getting second screen with Josh Allen last night. Not a horror fan. I do actually appreciate old horror movies much more than modern ones. I won't see any modern movie unless I'm like forced to for rewatchables. I just don't, I'm not a fan of shock horror. I like that the older horror movies are made, like it feels like the message of the movie and the filmmaking of the movie is like more at the forefront. And they're not just trying to scare you for scaring sake. So I do appreciate Exorcist, Halloween, Omen,
Also, man, we were cooking with horror music back in the day. Yeah. It's terrifying shit. It is so good. The second it started, I was like, wow. I was like blasting it for Liz. I was like, listen to this. Yeah. Was she like, cool. Put this on loop. Yeah.
What did you think was the single scariest scene? It's easily the girl committing suicide. The nanny hanging herself. Yeah. Really well done and really fucked up. Just like, they actually film it quite well. It looks good. The way that they're like, they're like, Damien, Damien. And then they all sort of start slowly looking up and she's just like,
It's all for you. It's one of the best horror movie scenes ever. Yeah. It really is. I like Damien's clothes. He's kind of dressed like Angus Young from ACDC at all times. Little British prep school. The little hat and his little tie. It's really creepy.
So that was Craig Horvath who produced this. Thanks, Craig. We might be back with a theme month next month. There's been rumors. This is one of your all time out of the box ideas. I got to say that. And I love it. Positive or negative? Positive. But I want you to, I want you to allow my one, my one suggestion into this, to this grouping. We're not going to talk about it now. You want to? We can talk it out. No, I don't want to tip off the theme week. Okay. Theme week or month? Theme month. Yeah. Yeah. No one will guess this one.
Do you know what it is? I think you've mentioned it, but I forgot. Much like Gregory Pak going to SDSU. That was the Omen. We'll see you next week in the Rewatch. Thanks.