Editorials
Did Jason Voorhees Really Almost Appear in ‘Waxwork’?
Waxwork is a childhood favorite of so many who grew up with it in the height of the video era—and for good reason. For kids introduced to horror through the relatively tame Universal Classic Monsters, maybe moving onto something like The Monster Squad after that, Waxwork is the perfect next step. It brings together nearly all the great monsters while modernizing things in great, goofy, gory glory. Anthony Hickox both treats the material seriously and embraces its sheer campiness in almost equal doses. Thanks to the recent Vestron Blu-ray release, it is being introduced to a bigger audience than ever.
Because of this cult audience it has amassed over the years, so many fans have suggested Waxwork as one of those rare horror movies that could benefit from a remake. Most of the comments are exactly the same: they believe that it should naturally be done by bringing in the iconic “modern” monsters of the ‘70s and ‘80s instead of simply reusing the timeless classics.
What these fans don’t realize, however, is how close we actually came to getting something like that in the first place.
Waxwork was never meant to include every current horror icon of the time in which it was made, but it was at one point going to at least include one—none other than Friday the 13th’s signature villain, Jason Voorhees!
For Waxwork fans, this was a rumor that had persisted for a very long time. I had always heard that Jason was in the original script, but was eventually taken out and replaced with another monster. The way it had always been described, Jason was meant to appear when Jonathon went over to the Waxwork to look for China and the others, only to be “fed” to the Phantom of the Opera. In the scene, Jonathon stops to see the wax figure and has a kind of fan boy reaction, recognizing the mask from the movie Curse of the Opera. David Warner’s Mr. Lincoln pauses, surprised, to say “They made a movie about the Phantom of the Opera?” And Jonathan replies, “Several.”
This scene makes no sense in its finished form in the film. Jonathan is a full-on jock, an established meathead and it’s a surprise for him to know much of anything about the Phantom of the Opera. But this absolutely seems like a guy who would have eagerly taken in whatever Friday the 13th was currently playing that weekend.
If you replace the Phantom with Jason in that scene, it makes perfect sense. All of that dialogue that doesn’t match up is immediately believable if Jonathan’s marveling at a hockey mask instead of the Phantom’s mask, or if Lincoln’s shockingly asking “They made a movie about the Crystal Lake killings?” Or something along those lines.
When looking at that scene and hearing that Jason was supposed to appear in it instead, it’s a no-brainer. It could also be completely wrong.
I actually looked up the original script and in that, Jason is nowhere to be found. He is definitely not present in the Phantom of the Opera sequence, which is written exactly the same way in the script as it appears in the finished film. But, not every monster that appears in the movie appears in that script, either. There were so many creatures featured in the waxwork and in the huge finale that didn’t get their own standout sequence, many of which were devised by Bob Keen and his FX crew during production.
From the Invisible Man, Frankenstein’s monster, to even Audrey II and the baby from It’s Alive, there are famous monsters all over Waxwork. It’s the Ready Player One of ‘80s horror flicks.
Yet there are several times when the camera will cut away to a generic woodsman holding an ax. He’s got nothing to do with anything, he’s not even a loose parody of a particular monster, so he seems a little out of place whenever he appears. He seems, at the very least, to be a simple stand-in for the generic 1980s slasher villain. It’s entirely possible that this could have been Jason, had he originally been meant to be included in the film.
But if Jason doesn’t actually appear in the script, how have fans known about his possible appearance for so long? The answer is pretty simple. To coincide with the film’s release, a comic adaptation of Waxwork was released by a small company named Blackthorne Press. Running only a single issue, the comic was available in both a standard and 3D version—this was sort of standard practice at the time; both Fright Night and Freddy’s Dead saw their own 3D comics as well, the latter in attempt to faithfully adapt that film’s finale.
Not only does Jason appear in the comic adaptation of Waxwork, he specifically appears in the Phantom of the Opera scene, as the rumor had always suggested. In this version, China is the one to ask if that mask is the same one from the movies, with Lincoln referring to the villain by name as he responds, “Films were made about the Jason killings?”
Jason makes several other appearances in the comic as well, right from the opening sequence. Instead of the homeless man being presumably murdered by Lincoln at the beginning, as he was in the film, he stumbles onto a wax figure of Jason and winds up getting his head split open by Jason’s trusty machete.
Jason also appears in the huge battle royale at the end, when all of the wax figures are brought to life during the grand finale. Whether any of these scenes are representative of where or when Jason was supposed to appear in the movie is completely unclear. As to why he didn’t appear, that is still open to some debate… but it’s probably pretty obvious.
Most of the classic characters that appear in Waxwork are public domain, with the designs of characters like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster changed so as not to infringe on Universal copyright, similarly to The Monster Squad. Other characters are visual references, maybe looking similar enough to be recognizable, but are not mentioned by name. Jason, however, was a very popular, modern, and most importantly trademarked horror icon at the time. He was very much owned by Paramount, and any major changes to his design would not have believably been the same character.
We did reach out to director Anthony Hickox to confirm that he does think Jason was considered, at least briefly, for either the first or second movie. But with those standing copyright issues in place, it’s easy to understand why he never actually made it into the film. If he would have had to appear wearing a mask similar to the one on the VHS cover for A New Beginning or a generic-brand hockey mask instead of the one we all know and love, it’s probably better that his appearance never came to fruition.
But one way or another, thanks to his lengthy guest appearance in the comic book adaptation, Jason Voorhees will forever be a part of the Waxwork legacy.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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