Editorials
Looking at the Horrible, Cursed Production of ‘The Omen’!
Donner’s horror classic from the ‘70s saw such bad luck during filming you’d think it was cursed by the Devil himself!
The Omen continues to be one of those standout horror pictures that spoke to something in the human consciousness. Not only did it spawn a series of films, but also created one of the most iconic representations of the Son of the Devil, and managed to make a dent at the Academy Awards, too. Damien’s even a member of freakin’ South Park! But in spite of the mass success and long legacy that Richard Donner’s horror film would see, it’s a miracle that the movie was even completed in the first place. Sometimes films are plagued with a number of production issues that slow things down, but The Omen experienced such a horrendous slew of bad luck, the film would even be considered to be “cursed” in retrospect.
Right out of the gate The Omen was looking at a stacked deck with their being bad luck present even in the pre-production phase. Two months before filming, Gregory Peck’s son committed suicide. Obviously this is a tremendous loss to go through for the Oscar-nominated actor who’s responsible for playing Damien’s father, Robert Thorn, in the picture. The subject matter even deals with Peck’s character struggling to kill his son.
When production did commence, there were weird bouts of coincidental bad luck right from the start. An airplane getting struck by lightning is a fairly rare occurrence, and yet it happened to both Gregory Peck’s and screenwriter, David Seltzer’s separate planes. This was merely when they were heading into production to begin with, giving them a fairly tumultuous start to things. Lightning would continue to play a weird factor here though, as not long after, executive producer Mace Neufeld’s plane was also struck by lightning. The experience would traumatize Neufeld, with him describing it as his “roughest five minutes” on a plane. In a final plane-related WTF moment, Gregory Peck canceled a flight reservation of his, only to later learn that his plane had crashed and killed everyone that was aboard! Then, just so lightning could prove that it hadn’t given up, Harvey Bernard, a producer on the film was narrowly missed by lightning while in Rome.
All of that alone would be enough to warrant The Omen as being cursed, especially when dealing with the topics of God and the Devil, and lightning colloquially being seen as an “act of God.” This was merely the tip of the iceberg though. A hotel that Richard Donner was staying at while production was going on would end up getting bombed by the IRA! Miraculously he survived, although he’d also get hit by a car during production, too. Vehicles would continue to be a tricky beast for The Omen, like on the first day of shooting when a head-on car collision would injure a lot of crew members, although thankfully not killing any of them. Later on, the actor who plays the taxi driver who takes Robert Thorn around Italy had the car door slammed on his hand by Peck accidentally, nearly taking off his finger (the huge bandage is still visible in the final film).
Animals can often be a tricky area for productions, especially when being around the Son of the Devil will have a tendency to make them go bananas. In this case, the trainers for the Rottweilers were injured by the dogs, who happened to bite through their protective gear in spite of the proper precautions being taken. Then, the animal handler/zookeeper who helped with the baboon scene at the zoo was eaten alive by a lion two weeks after the completion of the film. It was this act of unnatural bad luck that sealed the deal on the film’s alleged “curse.”
What’s even crazier is that more fuel has been added to this fire in recent years, with John Moore’s 2006 remake of the film also getting some residual curse mojo. For Moore’s remake they lost 13,500 feet of film, which contained the scene where Damien’s 666 birth mark is revealed. The lab had no idea what happened and were even in tears over the matter. The most that had ever been lost before was 400 feet of film (one roll), with this being outrageous and unexplainable. In another case of the Devil just playing with these chess pieces as they try to make this film, the actor who played Father Brennan in the remake, Pete Postlewaite, had his brother die. The craziest thing is that it was after drawing the combination of three sixes in a card game. How does that make any sense!
Finally, if there are still any skeptics out there, this is the smoking gun in the whole curse case. Like, I cannot believe that this actually happened because the odds are so astronomically small. John Richardson, the set designer responsible for the infamous decapitation scene in The Omen, suffered a car accident with his wife, Liz Moore, in August while shooting A Bridge Too Far. The car crash not only saw Liz decapitated in a way that looked identical to Richardson’s set design work for the film, but this all also happened on Friday the 13th, with a nearby street sign saying, “Ommen, 66.6km” which makes no sense. That’s too bonkers of a coincidence!
Regardless of if there was some greater power at work willing this bad luck to happen or not, there’s no denying that it’s a crazy amount of loss for a production to take on. It’s amazing that on top of that the crew could remain so resilient and the film would still turn out to be so satisfying. Let’s hope that the cast of A&E’s new Damien series doesn’t need to book any air travel in the near future…
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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