Franchise Review, Part Three: Omen III - The Final Conflict (1981)

Writer's Note: I had some pretty serious computer issues this week, which have been causing it to drag and make writing, much less editing and adding photos a real pain. I'm trying my best to rectify them, but know that I'm still working on it, and it may affect the timeliness of my output for a hot minute until the matter is taken care of.

I had hoped to get this article out on Friday, in honor of actor and star Sam Neill's birthday, but oh well. In a weird way putting it out on Sunday seems about right. I will try to get back on track ASAP, but hang in there in the meantime and just know that I'll get around to finishing off the series as quickly as I can. Thanks for your patience, and hopefully, I can have this matter solved by the time I start reviewing the Halloween franchise! 🎃

Horror tends to be a cyclical genre, and when the allegedly "final" entry in the Omen franchise landed in theaters in the early 80's, the landscape had changed immeasurably. Released the same year as Damien: Omen II, a little indie horror film by the name of Halloween took everyone by surprise- including, no doubt, the filmmakers themselves- when it became of one the biggest independent horror films of all time.

As such, Hollywood almost immediately starting ripping it off, and the Golden Age of Slasher Movies came into being. Almost at its peak when The Final Conflict was released, it was clear that the series would have to up its gore game considerably, in order to hang with the current competition.

After all, this was the time of Fangoria and its ever-more-grisly covers, a time in which FX guys like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Tom Savini and KNB were elevated to God-like status amongst horror fans, a time in which horror movies actively tried to outdo everyone else in the gore department at every turn. If a rapidly-becoming-obsolete sub-genre like the Satanic menace trope was going to put asses in seats, it was time to sink or swim.

As such, producer Harvey Bernhard decided if the Omen franchise was going down, it wasn't going down without a fight- or a big bang. In this case, literally. The grandiose final installment of the Omen series truly adopted the approach of go big or go home, with a plot-line that encompassed an explosive constellation heralding no less than the Second Coming of Christ, among many other elements.

With the first film's director, Richard Donner, back into the fold for the first time since The Omen, albeit only as an Executive Producer, Bernhard was determined to course-correct the series and make up for the perceived short-comings of the second installment by tightening up the reins and going for broke.

Bernhard hired screenwriter Andrew Birkin, brother of the famed model/actress Jane, who had worked with both Stanley Kubrick (on 2001) and The Beatles (on the oddball Magical Mystery Tour) and had wrote several acclaimed works inspired by author J.M. Barrie and his famous tale of Peter Pan, including a live televised musical performance  of Peter Pan (with Mia Farrow in the title role) for NBC and a mini-series about Barrie for the BBC.



Birkin concocted a tale that, in addition to the aforementioned Second Coming of Christ, also included a group of renegade killer priests determined to take down the Antichrist while he was vulnerable for perhaps the last time and a plot by Damien to not only take over the world, but to take down any and every would-be Christ child born around a specific time on March 24th. Yep, you read that right: a significant portion of the film's plot-line revolved around people (and even kids) going around killing newborn babies! 

With a suitably over-the-top story in place, Bernhard also nailed down a proficient director in Graham Baker, hoping to avoid the drama of the last film, in which the initial director had to be replaced after he proved to be unreliable and slow-moving, costing the production a bundle in the process.

Though a relative newcomer, Bernhard felt that Baker showed promise, having studied painting, graphic design and architecture in college before turning to film with the lyrical short film Leaving Lily, which had been nominated for a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscar. 

This would be Baker's first feature film, but Bernhard wasn't wrong, as Baker went on to considerable success with the cult hit Alien Nation, which eventually became a TV series as well, and fun, underrated flicks like 1984's Impulse and the 1999 version of Beowulf, starring Christopher Lambert and Rhona Mitra.  

For the cast, obviously, with Damien now an adult, an actor with a commanding presence was a necessity. At the same time, both for budgetary reasons and so that audiences didn't have preconceived notions about him, Bernhard felt that Damien should be played by a relative unknown. After failing to find anyone at first, actor James Mason recommended a young actor he was then-currently mentoring, Sam Neill, offering to fly him out on his own dime to meet Bernhard. 

Born in Northern Ireland, but primarily raised in New Zealand, Neill was just starting to make a name for himself, having already appeared in the New Zealand-made Sleeping Dogs and the well-received Australian film My Brilliant Career, alongside a young Judy Davis. Though an unknown in the States, when Bernhard saw Neill walk into a bar and every eye turn to him, and witnessed how charismatic he was with everyone, he knew he'd found his Damien.

Neill would, of course, go onto be a huge star worldwide, thanks to movies like Dead Calm, The Piano, The Hunt for the Red October and especially the Jurassic Park film series, so Bernhard really lucked out landing him so early on in his career. Indeed, Neill does command the screen in such a way that it really is tough to take your eyes off of him, in spite of how evil his character is.

Given all the wordy speeches Damien has in the film, all the quoting from scripture and hard lefts he has to make from charming to vicious at the drop of a hat, the character could have gone horribly awry in the hands of a lesser actor, but Neill positively owns the role in such a way it's hard to shake it afterwards. For years, I must admit, I was a little scared of the guy, even after Jurassic Park softened his image.

Given that I was still a committed church-goer every week at the time I first saw the film, I was genuinely taken aback by some of the things Damien said in this movie, which were so blasphemous, I felt that Neill almost had to have really been evil to get the part in the first place. 

That first, near-Shakespearean soliloquy he gives to the Christ statue (which I guess he literally just keeps around to berate) really scared the shit out of me, as did the speech he gave to the so-called "Disiciples of the Watch," which would make for a great name of a metal band. I can just hear the song now: "We Hear & Obey!"

Of course, I'm older now, so the film's spell wasn't quite as effective on me as it was when I was a kid, but I must say, that first scene still gives me the chills. Also impactful on me was the sex-turned-rape scene, which is still pretty shocking, even by today's standards.

In terms of the latter, I also couldn't help but thinking of what is colloquially known in the South as "The Devil's Doorway,"  aka anal sex, which is a dubious cheat some hardcore Christian girls use to bypass the whole losing-your-virginity-before-marriage thing and still remain "intact," which just goes to show how twisted an impact religion can have on some people's lives.

Interestingly, in the fourth book based on the Omen series, Omen IV: Armageddon 2000, which takes place directly after this movie, this brief moment is used to quite literally spawn a new story-line, in light of (spoiler) Damien's demise in this film. (It did not serve as the basis for the fourth film in the series, Omen IV: The Awakening, however,)

Believe it or not, the Kate Reynolds character that Damien sleeps with gets pregnant from that anal rape, the idea being it results in a "reverse birth" of an "abomination" from her anus! (What with his being the Antichrist and all, I guess Damien wouldn't get a woman pregnant in the same way as a "normal" man would.) Well, I can certainly see why that one didn't get made! Ick!

Of course, the bread and butter of any Omen flick is the elaborate deaths, and this one more than makes up for the issues in the last film, which featured some less-than-memorable scenes that were a bit on the underwhelming side.

Though the film does feature a good bit of behind-the-scenes type drama, which I found legitimately interesting, it also completely delivers on the death scenes, particularly in terms of gruesomeness, all the better to hang with the gory competition drenching the big screen with grue at the time.

In the first biggie, the current Ambassador is taking a walk in the park when he runs into Damien's favorite house pet, the famed Rottweiler, back for another go-round, after being noticeably absent in the second installment. Cue the freaky music, and the next thing you know, the Ambassador is staging a... press conference?

But wait, there's more. After puzzlingly assembling some sort of Rube Goldberg-style thing-a-ma-jig that he ties to the front doors of his office and attaches to something we don't see, he sits down at his desk and waits. Then, when the press corps arrives, he tells his secretary to send them in, they open the door and it activates the contraption, which we now see is attached to a gun pointed right at the Ambassador.

Bam! The gun goes off, sending a shotgun blast right into the Ambassador's head and splattering his brains all over the Presidential seal behind him, as his left leg does a little dance of death. It's a pretty spectacular way to open the film, even if we have to get through a good fifteen minutes of set-up to get there. Hell, if anything, it's precisely that set-up that makes the pay-off so great, IMHO. I certainly didn't see it coming the first time, that's for sure.

There's also a pretty great scene in which one of the killer priests (which would also make for a great metal band name) tries to catch Damien off-guard at a TV interview and stab him to death with one of the daggers of Meggido and is spotted by Damien's lackey and slips and falls, as a cable snakes around his legs, sending him cascading back and forth like a pendulum across the set, as a crew member accidentally starts a fire and he flies through it, catching on fire himself!

We're treated to an excellent, upside-down POV shot of the victim as he careens through the fire, and ultimately burns to death in front of a horrified crew. It's awesome. And astonishingly, it only gets crazier from there. 

As if kamikaze priests getting literally and figuratively dropped left and right weren't enough, when Damien discovers a second Christ child may have been born during a specific time on March 24th, he orders his acolytes to kill every one of the kids who fit that bill ASAP or face his wrath. Cue a montage of people killing babies in various nefarious ways, as if there were any other way to kill a baby.

One baby's carriage is sent careening down a hill and into the path of a moving car by an errant ball intentionally sent crashing into the baby's mother as she goes for a walk with her child. She lets go... and splat! We don't really see it, for the record, but we see plenty later on, so prepare yourselves, if you haven't seen the film.

Other notable baby-killing scenes- which is a sentence I never thought I'd write, ever- include: two fresh-faced young kids showing up at someone's house to "do their good deed for the day"; a renegade priest (and not the good, ass-kicking-for-the-Lord kind, either) baptizing a baby which he then proceeds to choke to death (!), and in the film's true pièce de résistance, a scene in which the wife of Damien's lackey, after seeing the Devil Dog in the window, takes an iron to both her husband and the baby- and you do indeed see the aftermath of both this time. 

Yikes! The Final Conflict don't play! I mean, don't get me wrong: as an adult, I'm well aware that that ironed baby is way fake-looking and almost funny out of context, especially when it swivels its head to look at dear old mom, but as a kid, that shit freaked me the fuck right out. In all, a whopping 31 babies are killed- maybe 32 if you include Damien's lackey's kid, which I think happens after that figure is announced. That's a lot of dead babies. 👶💀

I honestly can't say I'd seen baby violence in a movie before this movie, sans maybe dramatic scenes involving abortions (i.e. Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Last American Virgin), which is a little different than something like this, obviously. To this very day, I still can't say it comes up too often, with the notable and very dubious exception of the notorious A Serbian Film and maybe a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. 

Speaking of things that kind of went over my head as a kid- or weren't relevant then, at least- although I mentioned in my intro article how our current White House occupant was a little too stupid to qualify as the Antichrist (thank God- just imagine the damage he could do if he was actually as smart as he is a horrible human being), there were admittedly things in this that were hard not to think of you know who in regards to.

For instance, early on, there's a scene where the President of the US offers Damien a position as the new Ambassador, and he initially refuses, mentioning how he couldn't possibly do that, as he has a business to run and to take the job he'd have to step down as head of his company. The President laughs it off and says, don't worry about it- they can bend the rules a little to make it happen without him abandoning his business.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how that reflects what's going on right now in the White House- and He Who Shall Not Be Named probably didn't even have that sort of conversation with any higher-ups. He just shrugged, and said his son would step in to "run things" in his absence. Yeah, right. Junior is doing good to be able to operate a car, much less run a business- not that Daddy Warbucks is much good at it, either, in spite of what his and his supporters claim otherwise.

Another thing the gruesome twosome share is making it all about themselves. As he tells his sheep-like followers, all of whom blindly, unquestionably obey him (save maybe his lackey, who does put up a fight at least), if you fail, you fail me. Not you fail yourselves, or the world, or whatever. He's all about himself- if you don't do this, it'll be your fault if the world goes to Hell in a hand-basket. 

                                                       Insert MAGA hats here


Or in this case, actually Heaven in a hand-basket, being as how to fail in this case, it means that God emerges the victor instead of Satan. Which is, thankfully, what happens here.

Actually, just to play Devil's Advocate, it would have been interesting if they went the other way with it, if a bit of a downer. John Carpenter went that route a few times, notably in Prince of Darkness and, to a lesser extent, The Thing (we actually don't know what happens in the end there, technically).

Be that as it may, if you think about it, the Antichrist did come out on top not once, but twice, in the previous two movies, which could have been a big, eternal bummer if they hadn't gotten around to this film, too. Or not, I guess, depending on your point of view, i.e. if you're a big Church of Satan supporter. (Shout out to Chalice Blythe! Lol.)

I also enjoyed the fox hunt scene quite a bit. When I was watching the last installment, I was a little confused as I mis-remembered the scene as being in that film. Afterwards, I thought I must have seen it in something else, but it was actually in this movie, as it turns out. (The fact that it involves a similarly-aged boy, aka Kate's son, Peter, is what threw me, I think.)

Anyway, normally I abhor violence towards animals in movies- kill a billion people (and babies apparently) and I can deal, but kill a defenseless animal and I'm up in arms. It's why I haven't done a lot of Cannibal Holocaust re-watching (the animal deaths there are 100% real, though I didn't know that at the time I saw it), though I hear there's a "cruelty-free" version available nowadays, which is good to know.

One of the only good things to come out of this particular film's commentary, which is by the director and dry as dust, with an inordinate amount of dead air in between comments, which I hate- though not as much as animal violence, obvi- is that no foxes were harmed in the scene, or any other animal, which is good to know. (I also found out the same thing about the goldfish in the original Omen commentary, which was nice as well.)

But what made me remember the scene in the back of my mind wasn't that, but one of my absolute favorite things in a movie- when animals take matters into their own claws. I'm a sucker for a fun animals-gone-wild creature feature, which is part of why I made it a semi-regular column around these parts, and this film has a good one.

In the scene, two of the renegade priests corner Damien on a bridge through decidedly elaborate means, which, yes, involve one of them killing a fox, as aforementioned. Damien sends that one careening off said bridge by giving his horse the evil eye- and Damien didn't even have to kill the horse to do it. Who says the Antichrist is all bad?

Priest number two, though, gets it worse, when Damien sics a pack of wild dogs on his stupid ass, which is great, even if it looks more like they're fighting over a piece of steak or whatever- which they probably were IRL. Big score for the animals: Critters 2, Killer Priests 0, unless you count the poor fox. Serves 'em right.

After that, there's a great, oddly erotic scene in which Damien "bloods" Peter, Kate's son- no doubt with the blood of the priests, not a fox as Peter thinks- and Peter has a look on his face like he's in ecstasy. What the what? Perhaps it's meant as a sort of "reverse baptism," a la the "reverse birth" I mentioned earlier, with blood subbing for Holy Water.

Whatever the case, there's an interesting call-back to it later on, at the end of the film. In the final confrontation with what he thinks to be the Christ child, Damien's lured to a ruined castle, which I think was where a few of the other kamikaze priests bit it earlier in the film, in arguably the movie's goofiest scene, thanks to those oh-so-80's bolts of proto-CGI lightning, which couldn't look more fake. 

To add insult to injury, after an excellent lead-in and considerable build-up, which results in the priest killing one of their own, which is a neat twist, the up-until-then pretty cool scene end with the priests falling into a hole and being trapped? Kind of anti-climatic after all that build up. At the very least, they could have had a storm fill it up with water, or have Damien pour hot lead in there or something. Meh.

Anyhow, Kate leads Damien to said castle and Damien literally uses her poor son, Peter, as a human shield when the last of the renegade priests springs out and tries to kill him, causing him to kill Peter instead. Whoops! Then, after dispatching the final priest, Damien goes in search of the Christ child, taking his eye off the ball.

The ball, in this case, being the mother of the child he just sacrificed to save himself, who snags the dagger and promptly stabs Damien in the back with it, thus bringing his reign to a premature end before it really began in earnest. Way to hasten your own demise there, Damien.

Naturally, it's only then that God or whoever that is shows up at the end- basically, after all the action is over! Way to show up late to the party, Big G. Like, you couldn't have done that before, I don't know, 31-32 babies were killed? Thanks for nothing. Abraham, you spare, but these others? Whatevs. Real nice.  


We should be celebrating Kate, if you really think about it- she's the one that did all the heavy lifting, while losing a kid in the process. Leave it to a woman to do the job a man can't. Amen to that. If you think about it, that makes Kate the real hero of the entire series, not God. Not sure if they thought that one through.

Of course, if you look too hard at all this in general it doesn't quite hold up, plot-wise. Think about it- for one thing, the timeline is all messed up. How was Damien a kid in the early-to-mid-70's, then middle school age in the late 70's, only to shoot up to 32 in the early 80's? Yeah, that math don't add up. All they had to do was set it a few more years in the future and it would of been fine. I guess screenwriter Birkin's math wasn't his strong suit.

In addition, in the first film, it says plain as day that it takes all seven daggers to kill Damien, but here, they all get divvied up amongst the funky monks and apparently it's good enough to get the job done, as all it takes is a single stab from one of them to take Damien out, which none of them do, BTW. Damien 7, Priests 0.

Ah, but Kate gets the only point that matters in the end, so I can live with that. So, yeah, best not too look too close at the specifics in this movie in particular, but at least its never really boring, IMHO. To be fair, I hear the last two books in the series are able to ret-con some of this stuff, thanks to author Gordon McGill, who apparently CAN do math.

He reportedly changes the dates of events so that everything lines up in a sensible manner and directly addresses the whole dagger thing. Apparently, a single dagger can kill Damien's body, but not his soul- who knew the Antichrist had one!??- thus allowing Damien's soul to enter the baby "abomination" that Kate has in the fourth book that I was talking about earlier and carry on his evil. Again with the babies!

We're already running a bit long here, so I'll just do a brief recap of the cast before calling it a day. As the REAL hero of the movie, Kate Reynolds, we have Lisa Harrow, who I wasn't familiar with, but is really strong here. A native New Zealander, Harrow got a full scholarship to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she studied acting and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.

If the chemistry between her and Neill seems realistic, that's because it was- despite the dubious role he was playing, she and Neill fell for one another and ended up having a child together. Hopefully, it wasn't a rectal birth, lol. Notable credits include, interestingly, the film The Devil is a Woman- maybe those two were meant to be after all, if that title is any indication.


She was also in such films as All Creatures Great and Small, the 1980 version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Other Halves, Shaker Run, The Last Days of Chez Nous, Sunday and lots of TV, including, notably a little mini-series called Witchcraft, but of course. (Yep, that one's horror.)

As Harvey Dean, Damien's right-hand man, there's Don Gordon, who was all over TV, beginning in the early 50's and on into the 70's and 80's, where he became a go-to actor for playing hard-boiled cops and criminals alike. Good friends with the legendary Steve McQueen, the two appeared together in several films including Bullitt, Papillon and The Towering Inferno. 

Other notable credits include: The Gamblers, WUSA, The Last Movie, Z.P.G., Fuzz, Slaughter, The Mack (also with producer Bernhard), The Education of Sonny Carson, Out of the Blue, The Beast Within, Lethal Weapon, Code Name Vengeance, Skin Deep and (sort of) two other demonic-themed horror flicks, The Exorcist III (VERY underrated) and its "Director's Cut," re-titled Legion. I'll leave it to you to determine which is better, but I may tackle the series one of these days myself here, so hang in there if you're interested.

As the head of the bad-ass priests, there's the well-regarded Italian character actor Rossano Brazzi, who should be a familiar face to foreign film fans, though he has his fair share of American ones, too, including some bona fide classics. 

Notable films include 1949's version of the classic Little Women, Flesh & Desire, Three Coins in the Fountain, Legend of the Lost, The Barefoot Contessa, the musical classic South Pacific,The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, The Italian Job (the 1966 original), Sex of the Devil, Day of Judgment, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (which sounds awesome), Caribia, The Paramedic, cult director Abel Ferrara's Fear City and Fatal Frames.

Finally, in smaller, supporting roles, there's Louis Mahoney (The Plague of the Zombies), Richard Oldfield (The Empire Strikes Back, Lifeforce) and Tony Vogel (not his first-or last- religious rodeo: he was also in Jesus of Nazareth, The Day Christ Died and Jesus) as three of the killer priests; and Mason Adams (Lou Grant, Revenge of the Stepford Wives, F/X) as the President. 

Plus, as an added bonus, there's cameos from comedienne  Ruby Wax (Shock Treatment, Absolutely Fabulous) as the  Ambassador's secretary; horror regular Hazel Court (The Premature Burial, The Raven, The Masque of Red Death) as the woman with the champagne at the fox hunt- this was her final film- and producer Harvey Bernhard, also as a secretary, who's in all of the movies, but actually has some lines here.

Fun facts:

The interview with Damien/death of the priest in the TV studio took over two weeks to shoot.

The scene with the ironed baby was the 666th slated shot and the camera jammed during it.

The backwards fall from the bridge was done for real, which accounts for why it looks so realistic. Stuntman Vic Armstrong called it the scariest thing he'd ever done, and it was an over 100 feet drop, his highest ever.


In the book, it's revealed that the real Christ child was never in danger as it was born to a band of Gypsies while they were on the road, and thus the birth was never on record and Damien never even knew about it. So, yeah, all those babies truly died for nothing.

The film was originally titled simply The Final Conflict, not Omen III: The Final Conflict. That part was added for home video to more readily identify it as part of the franchise. It was promoted as the final entry in the series at the time, before a TV-movie followed years later.

Original Omen director Richard Donner wanted to resume duties for this film, but was caught up in legal issues springing from his being fired from Superman II. That's why he's only the Executive Producer. 

As with the previous films, composer Jerry Goldsmith does the honors for the score here. Though one might think he would phone it in by this point, this is arguably his most ambitious, best score for the entire series. It's certainly his more far-ranging, with far more musical cues and diversity than both of the two former movies combined. You can check it out here. As with the prior films, two versions of the soundtrack are available- the original release and a Deluxe Edition.

The Final Conflict isn't a perfect film, by any means. There are some slow spots and there are plot holes big enough to drive a busload of dead babies through. Critics lambasted the film upon its release, and it only grossed around $20 million at the box office- not bad for the budget, which was around $5-6 million, but nowhere near as good as the original, and even less than the first sequel.

As such, this was the end of the road theatrically for the  series, at least until the inevitable remake in 2006. (This doesn't include the various made-for-TV efforts, which we'll get to at a later date.) Be that as it may, I quite enjoyed The Final Conflict this go-'round, especially the bat-shit crazy plotting and the strong acting performances, especially from Sam Neill, Don Gordon and our heroine, Lisa Harrow, who does indeed give a harrowing performance.

Damien's speeches are just chilling- the scene where he gives one to a devoted crowd, chanting in unison, is goose-bump inducing and the first one at his house with the Christ statue should be completely unnerving for those of you out there who are devoted Christians, even in this day and age. And all kidding aside, that shit with the babies is hella disturbing.

Add to that the series' goriest moments to date- that suicide, the burning man scene and the ironing going horribly awry scene are ones for the ages, to be sure, and you won't soon forget them, especially if you saw this as a kid, as I did. As such, you have a pretty solid entry in the franchise, and an admirable ending to the initial trilogy, I think.

Join me next week for a look at the fourth installment, aka the TV-movie Omen IV: The Awakening, plus a look at the 2006 remake and at the other various made-for-TV efforts. See you then- and for Gods' sake, keep your eyes on those kids, parents! 👹