Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 11, 2022 7:42:25 GMT -8
What better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to watch a movie about the anti-Christ. The main point of irony is this part from IMDB's trivia section: Someone should have reminded Bill that this was a sequel. And sequels typically are minimum-effort vampyric productions borrowing heavily on the success of the original. This movie is truly awful. In fact, there were several scenes I found to be laugh-out-loud funny. This does not even equal the quality of a made-for-TV movie. Still, it was watchable on the level of b-movie fun. The over-acting in this is often hilarious. Nicholas Pryor is tops in this regard. There is no effort at all to make this a serious sequel. It looks like a high school project. Even so, amateur-hour doesn't seem to touch William Holden who plays William Holden to a tee (as Damien's foster father). But let us remember, there is a distinction between a good movie and one that is entertaining. This would be the kind of movie you would watch with friends and have to down a shot of bourbon whenever someone is killed either in order to protect Damien's true identity or is killed by Damien himself. Ham-fisted in the telling, we watch as Damien kinda-sort begins to realize that he has dark super powers. One reviewer hits the nail on the head: "Talky, unscary thriller warns of terrible things and then gives us cartoonish murders." And if you think that Jake Lloyd was miscast as the young Darth Vader, probably the most ominous things about Jonathan Scott-Taylor (who plays Damien Thorn) is his bad haircut. I mean, he does try at times to look menacing. But he never really pulls it off. The whole point of this film is, who dies next and how. And many of the deaths are indeed cartoonish. And there's a black crow who is doing the Devil's work when needed. I may now have to watch the third installment in this which features Sam Neill as the grown-up Damien.
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Post by artraveler on Dec 12, 2022 6:28:52 GMT -8
One of the advantages of being a non-Christian is not dealing with anti-Christ films. However, they do make for some entertainment. There are ample stories of Satan in scripture and commentaries without adding in the addition of another. All that said, I do enjoy seeing the the Omen series. Yes the Omen II is the weakest of the three movies and IMHO the Omen III is the best. Sam Neil gives a much better performance and the ending is satisfactory. Waring G-d wins.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,059
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 12, 2022 8:28:20 GMT -8
I remember that films such as The Exorcist were very popular with the religious. But devout Christian or not, they can be entertaining films for anyone. Omen III: The Final ConflictFirst off, I thought this bit of trivia was interesting: This was by no means Sam Neill's first movie, although the trivia does also mention that it was his "First international starring role in a Hollywood / American movie". It must have given his career a boost. He would go on to play many awe-shucks good guys. But he was equally good in the role of the villain (Reilly: Ace of Spies, Cardinal Wolsey, The Tudors). But he may have been immortalized as Dr. Grant in the Jurassic Park films and is an equally nice-guy character in The Dish. In this third installment of The Omen series, they return to something more than made-for-TV. Neill is fine in the role of the anti-Christ but he doesn't really have all that much to do in regards to showcasing real Satanism, although his one scene in his private anti-Christ chapel was a good bit of that. Otherwise he plays mostly a kinda-sorta nice guy Ambassador to Britain who is also a successful businessman and lets his dog do the heavy lifting of being the bad guy. This third installment could have easily been a three-part miniseries which would then give us a chance to see Old Nick rise to power and we could have seen more detail to the story instead of a quite brief overview. We see him luring into his fold the son of the reporter. But most of this stuff is done very briefly, in a sort of fast-forward condensed mode. There isn't time to explore nuances of much of anything. And that leads us to the greatest strength (if accidentally) and greatest weakness of this film: The Keystone Cops Priest Squad. These seven priests each have one of the special knives that are the only thing that can kill the anti-Christ (other than free and fair elections). It is is literally laughable how inept they are. They should have hired Schwarzenegger...or at least some specialist. But it is truly funny at times just how Keystone Cops they are. The death of the first priest in the studio is a classic example of How Not To Kill Satan. No wonder the devil thought he could win. But there's a problem with Satan's plan to rule the earth through his son. In Britain (somewhere) is born the Christ child (again) in the official Second Coming. The trivia section notes that in the original book that is based on the screenplay, the child is born to a band of gypsies which is why there is no record of the birth and thus the anti-Christ can't find him. This bit could have been fleshed out in a mini-series. I don't think I'll watch the fourth installment because it looks like a real dog from the reviews. And there was a remake of the first film in 2006. But, again, the reviews don't look all that good for it. Still, for a religious horror film, it works pretty well. If you haven't seen 1999's Stigmata with Gabriel Byrne, I would give that one a look.
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