Cursed Movie: The Omen
Posted by Dr. William Russo in	actors & their roles, bad art, bad luck, based on a bad book or play, curses, film reviews, gothic horror, Hollywood History, movie history, myth & legend and tagged with Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Richard Donner, Shudder Network, The Omen	 May 3, 2020
DATELINE: Horror Curses!
Happy Family?
Shudder network has presented a limited series on movies that have a cursed production history. This is more than intriguing to someone who writes books about Hollywood productions. The classic horror movie called The Omen with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick was filmed in England in the late 1970s.
You may recall the plot: an incarnation of Satan is born to the happy couple, and as the kid grows beyond toddlerhood, he becomes a hood of the first order.
They talk to a producer and director Richard Donner who tells a few hair-raising and distressing anecdotes, but they also consult some "male" witches who do not call themselves warlocks. One actually performs a curse on a film production or producer in a show of nastiness.
Witches do not believe in coincidence—and see all the events as cause and/or effect. The film hired an occultist/Satanist as technical advisor—and he told them that the Devil would not be happy with their script and production.
Gregory Peck cancelled a flight to England—and that plane actually crashed, killing all aboard. When he nervously scheduled another flight, that jet was hit by lightning. The same happened one of the the major producers when he traveled to the film site.
Another producer and his wife were going out to have dinner at a posh London restaurant when they heard an explosion: the IRA set off a bomb in their dining destination. They were minutes away from being killed.
Another production worker and his girlfriend were driving when they were in a car accident—and an upset Donner related how she was decapitated like one of the characters in the movie. She was killed on the road to "Ommen" under the sign that said it was merely 66.6 kilometers away.
The animal trainer was killed by a tiger at the zoo where he worked during the film's post-production.
As parents in the film of a satanic child, both Remick and Peck were naturally fidgety. However, the director admitted that the incidents never delayed or stopped the film: in fact, he saw the actions as protective of his movie and workers.
Satan loved the movie enough to give it his blessing.
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